I program on the subway
scd31.com
scd31.com
At 5:30am each weekday in the early 1970s, a bus pulled up to a stop in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and a young man lugging a bag that bulged with papers mounted its steps. He was making the two-hour commute to New York City, where he worked at the investment banking firm of Drexel Firestone. The train would have provided a more comfortable and faster ride; but, for those very reasons, it also offered more opportunity to meet other Wall Street acquaintances. They would want to engage in the kind of idle small talk that commuters share to pass the time. The thought must have been intolerable. He did not wish to be rude, but he wanted no interruption.
As soon as he had settled into his seat, being sure to take one with an empty one adjacent, he unloaded a mountain of prospectuses and 10ks (annual Securities and Exchange Commission filings) onto the seat next to him. On winter mornings the sky was still pitch black and the light on the bus was too dim for him to be able to read. He wore a leather aviation cap with the earflaps down; he had been bald for years, and although he wore a toupee his head always felt cold on these frosty mornings. Now over his aviation cap he fitted a miner's headlamp -- strapped around the back of his head, with a huge light projecting from his forehead.
Unfortunately I can't program on a bus, I get motion sickness. Subway works very well though! It insulates me from most distractions. The only problem is that the longest subway commute I ever had was about 45 minutes; solid 2 hours would allow for so much more! :)
He said the benefit was being able to spend more time with his family at night when he got home. He knew he would have some time on the train, so not having to crack his laptop to get in some coding after dinner allowed him to spend a lot more time handling the kids and spending time with his wife.
"Work/Life balance achieved!" he used to proclaim with a big smile when we'd sit and chat.
But I can sometimes code until like 4AM. Weird.
I also find the idea of "forcing" yourself to read rather peculiar, but we're all different people. I wonder if there's genuinely something different in how the brain reacts.
I read the Zodiac book by Robert Graysmith in less than two days over break in college. Could not put it down.
I've gone through so many books it's crazy :)
With audiobooks I can start listening the second I step out of the door and stop while I take my jacket off in the office. With e-books I usually just read on the train.
Most books aren't that long, around 5 hours a week of reading just during your commutes is quite a bit.
The book that stood out the most. Sugar Barons.
i need a couple of hours to do any technical reading
20 minutes, maybe, maybe .. good enough if i am reading fiction or something
> good enough if i am reading fiction or something
Looks like you got there in the end.
I've seen a phone jacking in this exact scenario and nobody moved to stop the guy running. Nobody on the train can help cause the doors have closed, and nobody on the platform has any idea anything just happened, or if they do the guy is well gone before they can put two and two together.
For me I always pocket my phone or e-reader at each stop, unless I'm in Japan or Taiwan.
What also helps is having one that's full of stickers or overall looks fairly (ab)used. A pristine MacBook is going to be much more of a target than a random ThinkPad with a sticker, greasy keyboard and 20 scratches.
The article suggests the laptop is about $300, and he uses it about 1hr/day.
If the laptop is stolen less than once a year he spends less than $1/hr for coding on the go, which I would consider a fair deal.
It would be interesting to see if that would deter a thief.
You could attach it to something bulkier or something that you could put under the seat, maybe. I don't remember if New York subway seats have an exposed bar underneath that you could lock it to. I'm sure locking it to the vertical poles in the center of the car would be extremely antisocial.
Sure, maybe it will deface the stolen item when it gets ripped off, but for a thief, the device is still usable, and it can be sold for parts or at a discount. We are talking about the sorts of people that steal bicycle wheels and seats.
Their utility is in keeping honest people honest. For example, keeping office workers or customers from just walking off with or moving assets.
Check the Youtube video in my comment above.
Although I'd highly recommend putting some cloth around it, or fitting it through the belt loops of jeans/trousers to soften the inevitable 'yank' when it comes.
I once was on a MARC train at DC Union Station. Some train cars have electrical sockets, so I plugged in a bike light I had since I'd be taking a bike for the last part of the trip. The train hadn't left the station yet. I was standing near the seat with the socket. Some unassuming looking guy was walking through the train car, like probably 100 did before him, when he grabbed the light, unplugged it, and kept walking. I immediately confronted him (I was in his path) saying something like "What are you doing?" Without a word, he handed me the light and walked off the train. I found a conductor like 15 seconds later and they called security, who apparently detained the guy.
This guy was way more brazen about stealing something of little value than I had expected. I was standing near the seat and watching it! I guess he didn't expect me to be the owner.
Crazy to think back to 2007 when iPhone users were advised to buy black earphones so the white ones wouldn't give them away as targets for theft. How far we've come/how commoditized our electronics have become.
You should be worried about getting actually robbed, or even being attacked for no reason, while you're not paying attention.
Also, yes, nobody's going to help you. Some of it is because of general unawareness, as you point out. Then, it's difficult to know who's the aggressor. Even if that's all crystal clear, you're almost certainly going to deal with months or years of legal hell if you intervene. Successful interventions often lead to prosecutions.
You say this but I've seen countless videos of Apple stores getting raided by thugs who steal all the devices. We all know those devices will shut down and be inoperable but they don't know and/or care.
Are you aware of any law enforcement agencies that would risk loss of life for material objects? Even in the case of harm prevention, it's a failure if the perp dies. That's still seen as a policy or op failure.
The case of Daniel Penny cited above is straightforward: "Neely boarded the car Penny was riding and reportedly began threatening passengers. After the train had left the station, Penny approached Neely from behind to apply the chokehold, and maintained it in a sitting position until Neely went limp a few minutes after the train had reached the next stop."
That's exactly what a successfully stopped threat looks like. That the threatening person ended up dying is unfortunate, but they did ultimately bring that upon themselves. They were free to stop being a threat to others at any time.
But then I don't know what you're trying to imply with the loss of life to protect material objects comment. Seems like an attempt to troll, because nobody is talking about that.
From the thread (edited for clarity):
-> I've seen a phone jacking in this exact scenario and nobody moved to stop the guy running. Nobody on the train can help cause the doors have closed, and nobody on the platform has any idea anything just happened, or if they do the guy is well gone before they can put two and two together.
-> I'm not worried about the laptop. Pretty much everyone knows that any valuable laptop is a tracking device anyway. You should be worried about getting actually robbed, or even being attacked for no reason, while you're not paying attention.
-> Are you looking for examples? Off the cuff, in the past 2 years we've had 2 high-profile incidents: Jordan Williams and Daniel Penny.
Theft -> examples of loss of life during "successful interventions".
> That's exactly what a successfully stopped threat looks like.
We might be getting caught up on how to define successful here. If by successful you mean that the outcome was legal then I agree, and would say the outcomes of these trials were likely the appropriate outcome.
But if by successful you mean the best outcome, which is what I take it to mean, then I disagree. A successful intervention would be one where no-one was injured. I've spent years riding trains in Chicago where there's a pretty regular cohort of individuals suffering from various mental illness. I even lived in a building that partially served as a half-way house for such individuals. I've seen people do what Jordan Neely was claimed to do a couple dozen times without altercation. I've also seen people assaulted and knifes get pulled. There are ways to de-escalate a situation that doesn't result in a lethal outcome. That should be the definition of successful here.
> Random passerby are not law enforcement professionals, they're untrained and therefore can't be held to such standards.
The standard is the law. Vigilantism doesn't get a pass on the law just because it was good natured. Perhaps the law gives good natured people caution, but the alternative is much worse. "Legal hell" as it was put, is appropriate when involved in the death of an individual. That's just a consequence of living in a society that values human life.
Cafes... I'll go to the bathroom or whatever and just leave my stuff all out on the table, meanwhile with my high-end bicycle parked unlocked and out-of-view outside.
It, of course, isn't like this EVERYWHERE in Japan, but many many places.
Anyway. A) it was ancient and worthless and B) if anyone tried anything it was heavy enough it could do serious damage.
Laptop on the other hand... Many times working on the train i've been thinking about some accelerometer based emergency lockdown. Can't be that hard to do.
Vibe coders feeling a great disturbance in the force.
I spent the first year at that job commuting into DC 2-3 days/week, which involved about an hour drive, then an hour regional commuter train, then some Metro transfer and walking — then back again in the evening. I spent that train time offline (as it was 2004) learning the Apple Cocoa frameworks, as in another twist of fate, the company was entirely Apple laptop-based, which was fairly rare for 2004, and I built tools for the team and myself. The focus possible because I was offline, with comprehensive docs, was pretty intense and was a huge part of many aspects of my career to follow.
I’ve had phases of my life where I was lucky to have periods of absolute and undisturbed focus (grad school, summers during college, etc.). It’s easy to forget how valuable that type of focus time is until it goes away!
The commuting... not so much. Moved into DC proper after that year, which itself was a great adventure. Leaving the house at 5:30-6:00am and returning at 8:30-9:00pm was no way to live.
As I use Gentoo I also usually have the source code for anything on my system, so I can dig into that if I'm missing some docs, as there's frequently a docs/ folder in the archive.
If I'm missing documentation, I make a note of it and see if there's a way to make it available locally, somehow.
I wanted a Lisp to be my new platform language for rapid systems research. And I had to spend most of each day on my laptop, from cafes and parks around town, with very little Internet access.
So I got all the docs locally, and I kludged up Emacs as a power-efficient "IDE" (including avoiding having to run a bloated Web browser), to help keep the hard drive spun down and CPU slowed.
Then I simply did a lot of programming, without distractions like open plan offices and pointless meetings. Even though I might be sitting against a tree in a busy park, and then have to move to a noisy cafe to recharge battery. Still so much less distracting and less stressful than an open plan office.
I agree it was for you, but it had well-earned the “eight megabytes and constantly swapping” reputation 35 years ago.
Now I program casually in public spaces, including the underground, on my GPD Micro PC [0]. It, too, has attracted numerous glimpses and been a conversation starter on some occasions.
[0]: https://blog.danieljanus.pl/2022/08/18/i-love-my-gpd-micro-p...
The subway produced so many repeatable network connection edge case problems. It was fantastic.
It was essentially forced meditation, and it helped me a lot in reorganizing my thoughts.
I had moved next to the office later, and noticed that I’d really missed those meditative hours. I saved maybe 1.5 hours of commute every day but my net productivity had declined.
I don’t think it would be as easy to achieve the same effect today as it was back then. We now have phones and interactive ads, and that dopamine driven economy.
I miss that about those times.
I've been trying somithing similar, but more active - beach walks in the in the early eavning. there are still people there but not too many. my goal was to acknoledge everything and enjoy the moment. i was not quite successfull though, it was still too much for me to acheive tranquility :)
Suffice to say, after almost two years of this, I was extremely tired and sleep deprived as this ate away at my available time more than what is reasonable. Using the time for personal projects didn't compensate for it. Never again, it's really not worth it.
Losing 2-3h per day commuting is not something I am gone miss anytime soon.
These days Caltrain is faster and has occasionally frustrating, but fairly good Wi-Fi, so now my constraints are that I don't have a large monitor but not really much else.
1. Cell service has become low-latency. This is very different from "fast", which it has also become! When I started working from the train (on HSPA+), pings in the hundreds of milliseconds were the norm. My first step was usually to SSH to a remote machine, and let just the text lag on me. Nowadays, I can run a Web browser locally without issue.
2. Cell service has, at the same time, become ubiquitous in subway tunnels. When I started, there were some areas that dropped down to EDGE (unusable), and some areas that had no service at all. Now, there is exactly one place on the Boston transit system - Back Bay Station - where I lose cell service.
3. Noise cancelling tech has gotten better. It's not just about noise cancelling headphones: both of my laptops (a 2024 MBP and a ThinkPad P14s) have microphones that can filter out screeching wheels and noisy teenagers quite well. That means I can take meetings without making them miserable for the people on the other end.
These, honestly, are a huge game-changer for me. The ability to take a 30 minute meeting while commuting, where otherwise I would've had to get in early or stay late at work, actually does wonders for my ability to have a life outside of work.
At the small cost of making everyone around you miserable.
Not in New York, unfortunately. All of the stations have cell service, and one tunnel (14th Street L train tunnel under the East River), but everywhere else has no service between stations. It’s an annoying limitation that most cities seem to have fixed by now.
The longer train I would use my laptop, same with the 20min underground section on the journey in (going home no chance), but for the packed train and the walk I listened to music (I still have my Diamond Rio PMP300, no idea if it still works, just remember downsampling music to 32kbps to get more on a memory card, quality was less important than quantity - I must have listened to David Gray’s album _White Ladder_ many hundreds of times).
Toshiba laptops (Satellite? I think they were before the Tecras), heavy and the battery life wasn’t much more than 90 minutes but it was just enough. Dual booting Windows and Linux. (Linux for dev work on the go…)
Obviously no mobile connectivity back then, I had to have a plan for what I was going to work on and that also involved backup plans if I ran into a blocker on the primary. Same for the way home.
A bit later I could get GPRS data rates via Infra-Red to my mobile and that just felt like magic.
I found the times I couldn’t be on my laptop (walking or on the packed train) were great for thinking problems through and often had to stop to scribble down thoughts/ideas/solutions in a notebook that I kept in the laptop bag.
Wrote so much useful code in that 18 months without the distractions of the Internet or emails or whatever.
Now I somehow find I have less time despite having virtually no commute. Technology has vastly increased the number of distractions and I have let myself succumb to them. Where I had no real choice in what music I listened to now I have too much choice. There’s always one last thing to check before I get on with a bit of work. Sometimes I wish for simpler times.
Now, as for "did I proceed with more serious learning" - I alternate though a ton of hobbies. So I moved on after that, though still go back to it from time to time. But I also have other musical interests and it was helpful to those as well.
Also did a lot of music on the commute on my iPhone with Korg Gadget (and Caustic before that). Sometimes with a keyboard, sometimes without.
It’s nice to be less tethered to a desk, while also not having to carry a backpack and heavier full laptop, but still able to remote in and do what I need to do. I really enjoy having a fully capable Linux PC in my pocket vs a smartphone.
Is it actually decent for typing on? I'm perennially tempted, but I'm somewhat skeptical of a small keyboard vs touch typing.
I sometimes do "iPad work", which is essentially researching, reviewing and annotating content on my iPad Mini. I will hop on my bike and work an hour or two in different locations, over coffee or in the sun. It's a relaxing break from working on a computer at a desk.
I do think that people should work in different places. Perhaps we'd have apps that work better on slow internet.
In my previous $dayjob I was That Guy who was getting pinged on chats and emails and people dropped in for "just a quick question". When I had to get work done on a deadline, I went to a cafe down the street, turned off the chats, got a massive bucket of coffee, put on my noise cancelling headphones and just ... worked. Later when the office got bigger (multiple stories in the same building), I "hid" on a couch at a complete different department for the same purpose.
That was almost 10 years ago and still my brain connects couches and cafes as deep work places :D
All my experience with public transportation is having to roll the dice and more often than not losing - having to stand while packed liked sardines into a bus or subway.
The lack of internet on the bus has not really been a problem since I plan ahead and make sure any dependencies I need are already downloaded.
I use an old (2010 era) Toshiba netbook which is small enough that I'm not causing problems for my seat neighbours. It's also only got a dual-core 1GHz processor which kind of forces me to find performant solutions to problems.
Much like the author I've also been thinking about how I can make my setup more portable. I've been considering purchasing AR glasses and using my Charachorder2 so I don't even need to get the netbook out of my bag. At this stage I can't justify the cost of a pair of AR glasses though.
Some recent projects my commute has given me the time to work on:
- a text editor (OCaml, SDL)
- a 3D game (C, OpenGL)
- an x86 operating system (Zig)
I gave myself the rule of no internet while on the train, so sometimes I would just accumulate a list of questions I wanted to answer later.
There is definitely something to it, and you can get heaps done, but it needs to be supported with some non-train time (e.g. for me, it was all the app store stuff, debugging with real hardware, etc)
More generally, I find that switching up your surroundings is absolutely vital for your brain's ability to focus on hard tasks. I will hit a wall if I try to work multiple 10+ hour days sitting in one spot, but a comfortable spot in a different coffee shop or lounge can totally trick my brain into powering through.
> This commuter rail experience is probably familiar to many of us, but it's specific to commuter rail - being a passenger on a subway or in a car/bus is too chaotic or bumpy to do this.
But on longer trips from e.g. upper Manhattan to deep Brooklyn, particularly at off-peak hours when I have room to spread out—yeah, I’ve had some very productive sessions.
This reminded me of the "walking desk" Stephen Wolfram uses to program:
https://content.wolfram.com/sites/43/2019/02/07-popcorn-rig1...
I tried to use a similar one during Covid and couldn't get into it at all.
Laptops sometimes have stickers. For a time, I instead had a transparent slip cover, to vary the sticker set, user-test alternatives, and throttle conversations. Science education topics (Boston/Cambridge subway). Anti-patriarchy stickers drew proto-MAGAs. Some backpacks now have low-res screens built into the back, suggesting new possibilities.
One Laptop Per Child, at its peak, generated fun continuous crowd conversations.
> a pair of glasses with a screen inside of them
I've no idea what current tech is like, but I use to proselytize aphysical UIs, where a small head motion results in larger screen motion, to reduce neck swiveling.[1]
> weirder
Laptop harness walking desks are a thing. And one can do hand and head tracking[2] (I had that setup at a meetup where the swag was little stick-on privacy shutters for laptop webcams :). Boston/Cambridge is perhaps culturally a best case for such games - I've not tried them in NYC... hmm.
> but something very complex, [...] instead sketch out a diagram on a piece of paper [...] keep a small notebook in my bag
Same. I've tried swapping in an iPad, but it hasn't stuck.
[1] silly old demo, 5k on a bus: https://x.com/mncharity/status/1225091755667853318 [2] https://imgur.com/a/keyboard-cam-Z1VipaL
It’s overall time much better spent than being stuck in a car.
That's why whenever I move to a new city, I typically look to live somewhere that's at the end of the metro line. It meant in the morning commute I can _always_ get a seat.
That was one of the reasons I liked living in Hammersmith when I worked in Shoreditch/Old Street - it's at the end of the Hammersmith and City Line and I don't have to change lines. There's also the add bonus that the line is above ground until Paddington which meant I have more than enough time to load up any tabs I need to use before the Internet blackout.
In Hong Kong I worked at Central and lived in Tsuen Wan. Literally from one end of the line to the other. This had the added bonus that I was also guaranteed a seat on the way home as well.
It's not something I'd want to do on the daily but if you really need to get something done and are running out of time (those busses get stuck in traffic for half an hour or more), it's doable.
I actually feel like oversea flights are my most productive sessions.
I could totally see my using the train to drive through the country to work on some stuff, where I barely need internet.
It’s almost always better than my 49 inch monitor at home lol.
You can use commute time for day dreaming. It's not a waste of time
Much better experience than working on a plane. I've done a handful of cross-US flights this year on Alaska Airlines, and trying to do anything network-related on those flights was torture. Super spotty, high latencies, constant timeouts; very frustrating.
One thing I love about coding on public transport is the sense of urgency can be fun.
Being on the verge of figuring out a bugfix or whatever when you know train is pulling into the station and you have maybe a minute to go, cracking it, quick test, bundle the laptop quickly back into your bag as you step off the train is quite a nice feeling.
No access to internet so mostly hacking from memory. I could use man pages for C, but Haskell was a bit more tricky.
Sometimes I’d just end up sketching things out on paper, but eventually I could complete entire modules without looking anything up. Was always a bummer to be stuck on something that I knew could be answered online in mere seconds. Good times.
I would absolutely never do this in a public place, much less a crowded one.
This guy’s figured it out though.
https://evantravers.com/articles/2023/04/06/magsafe-tenting-...
For something sturdier I use Ulanzi super clamps with extensions.
The Glove80 (which is fantastic, as a 15 year Kinesis Aadvantage user prior) also has a tripod mounting kit which I haven't tried yet.
It's often less productive than a normal workday so i dont do it super often, but It's very enjoyable, and the change of scenery sometimes helps me get unstuck on problems.
There is no cellular data in the NYC subway? I had to look it up online and apparently there is but coverage is quite patchy. That's very surprising to learn, NYC being one of the most developped and richest cities in the world. By comparison, and from my experience, the Parisian metro has excellent coverage.
But I’ve never felt comfortable opening a laptop on the NYC subway. It wasn’t about the safety that OP describes. It was about the culture and the physical configuration (facing middle with strap hangers vs facing front/back). It just didn’t feel right in the subway.
I do miss the MetroNorth Bar Car! I could drink and code and it was jovial.
Figured he just used the metro as his workplace.
An intercity train with wifi/cell service (and tea!) is an incredible focussing function as well. You got 3 hours and a beautiful not too distracting view. Go!
P.s. I also suggested to Stephen that he gets a Nathan Fielder “laptop harness” for his subway work..? Has anyone tried this?
[0] https://ask.metafilter.com/316039/Ideas-for-workspaces-pleas...
Why you ask?
I'll tell you. He edited videos on the NY subway using his Lenovo(?) laptop with a massive extra battery hump in the back, which he used as a handle to hold on to with one hand while he typed with the other.
After our standup in the morning, the graphics artists would have made tons of drawings on the paper table cloth. If they had access to a pen and paper, they would be drawing.
Lucky you. :) Good problem to have.
This has to be satire.
All on a Chromebook with crostini. Cheap, long battery life and decent keyboard.
No chance of reading my phone or Kindle, let alone using a laptop!
I had to pay the $90 three drink minimum to get in. Getting that reimbursed was fun.