Comment by brosephius | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brosephius | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, I still can't agree with #1. It assumes that all workplace programming is gluing things together, fixing/maintaining legacy crap, or writing generic CRUD apps, which is untrue. I know some great programmers who never code in their spare time, and some that do that are, quite frankly, very uninteresting people to be around due to their lack of other hobbies.

I know the current trend in startups is all about "show me your github", and I admit that it has some value as a filter, but I feel like I'm seeing people writing fairly uninteresting code snippets and blogs just to put it on their resume, in the same way that high schoolers join a bunch of student groups to beef up college applications. There are plenty of programming jobs that require writing complex code and having deep domain knowledge, and to discard those candidates because they can't show you their code and have other hobbies outside of work is just not smart.

I think "show me your github" might be the most toxic practice for the well-being of software developers' lives that is popular on HN.

As I said elsewhere, I really like programming and will often do it in my spare time because it's fun. But needing to maintain some public repo or an open-source project in order to get a job makes it no longer fun.

> needing to maintain some public repo or an open-source project in order to get a job makes it no longer fun.

I completely agree, and I already have an above average amount of open source code available on Github. Some startups have found my projects and mentioned them in interviews, which was great, but I've never been directly asked for my code before an interview, and I like it that way. Writing code for the purpose of showing to potential employers would ruin the magic.

I actually respect more programmers who do other things on their spare time. Cooking, traveling, photographing, sports, volunteer work... Doing other things add knowledge, build character and improve your level of happiness.

It's important to be open-minded and possess a large array of skills. Specialization is overrated, an invention from industrial era. Ideally, everybody should be a da Vinci.

I don't understand why this is either/or. Life is long. It's possible to write code for fun AND race motorcycles, travel the world, cure meats, play soccer, sail boats, read books, etc...

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