Ask HN: What do you do when you're not working/programming? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you do when you're not working/programming?

35 pointsankushio39 comments

I am a 23 year old programmer working at a successful Bay Area startup and I spend most of my time at my day job programming and after I get home from I am either continue where I left off at work or watch Netflix. If I am not doing either of those, I am either on Hacker News or on some tech website reading how to conquer the world with the latest programming language.

I do not have any hobbies outside of work. What hobbies do programmers/hackers have on this thread? What things do you do outside of work?

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Get started on the classics. As a very strong general rule, they're classics for a reason. Some of them can be read in a single long sitting ("The Great Gatsby" springs to mind for that). Old and modern; the British author David Mitchell has written some fist-bitingly good modern literature. Branch out; some modern Japanese literature is so good it carries through the translation.

If you can, get them in second-hand paperback - carry them, bend them, flick back and forth through them, mark them up with a stub of pencil. They're so good. They really are. Thankfully, they're also something that can't be hacked, pivoted, presented as a service, gameified or whatever other buzz phrases we churn out to make ourselves feel smug. There's no other way to read them than to simply open the book and read.

You have some really amazing surfing and bouldering right in your back yard. Both easily accessible for after work sessions. It's one of the few places in the country that has both, so you're making me sad by not doing either of them.

Castle Rock is like a mini Fontainebleau, with really nice sandstone in a pleasant setting. Train up at any of the half dozen local climbing gyms, then start heading up the hill every evening once the days get longer.

Santa Cruz has tons of amazing breaks, but Pleasure Point is my particular favorite, with its easy access, fun waves, and good aprez surf tacos a short walk away.

Both those things will fix any back/wrist issues you might try to inflict upon yourself sitting in that felt cube all day. Both will encourage you to get out travelling, which is an added bonus. You'll one day find there are beaches with tropical warm water where you won't need that 4 mm of rubber anymore, and hillsides with more than seven distinct boulders in a half mile radius.

Good luck!

How are the crowds in the SF area lineups? It always looks packed in surf videos. I've been to SF but never had the chance to surf or go to a beach other than Muir Beach.

I live in Columbus, OH, and I do far less than what some of these posts do, but haven't seen anyone else from Ohio so I thought I would post.

* Read - Much like the others I'm constantly reading something, not usually programming related

* Learn - Also like others, I'm always teaching myself something new. Cooking something new, knitting, organic chemistry, I'm kind of all over the map

* Archery - http://www.velocityarcheryrange.com/ Sorry for their awful website (not my code, just to throw that out there* but I go out every now and again and shoot a bow and arrow for something physical to do that's eccentric and difficult enough to keep me interested

May update if I think of more things that I do, or if I remember Columbus-based things if people are interested!

* Running - I try for 3x a week, usually 5k but sometimes I got 6k or 7k on the weekend.

* Volunteering - I socialize feral and semi-feral cats for 3-4 hours a week at a local animal shelter. I get a lot of cuts and scars from it, but it's great when the scared animal I met becomes someone's loving pet.

* Reading - Right now I'm reading a book on the history of Mexican food in the US ("Taco USA"). It keeps me thinking about things outside the tech scene.

* Gardening - Not as easy now that I'm living in an apartment, but I like getting my hands dirty and you can't beat the taste of food you grew yourself.

Flying, biking, walking my dog, swimming, reading.

If I had to make a suggestion, I'd say get a bike and find some interesting trail close to where you live. Cycling is great exercise, very invigorating (mentally and physically). It's a very good way to both reduce stress, give yourself more energy and come up with new ideas and solutions to problems.

Building physical objects. Primarily furniture. It's ridiculous how many problems you can solve while using a woodplane.

I Don't really have a schedule and i find it really hard to stick to a routine due to problems with getting to bed and waking up the same time every day.

But normally this is what i do.

* wake up between 10:00 and 12:00 take a shower and make coffee.

* Code on a start-up me and my brother are in the making of.

* 3 times a week i hold boxing classes at my dads gym.

* After work i watch a movie or read on hacker news.

Sometime i wish i could get on with a routine and stick with it, it would benefit me in many ways. But my discipline on going to bed and waking up on proper times is none and i have never been able to do that in my whole life, so i don't see it happening in some time.

I have also tried to get back into boxing and marital arts, i used to be really into that and train 5 times a week. But my interest in training and martial arts have almost disappeared as i have been doing it since i was 9 and i have no idea how to reignite the flame i used to have.

A few things. It depends when you're asking what my interests are around then.

At the moment these spring to mind:

Chess - casual player, friends and family type thing. Never been competitive enough to want to learn specific openings and counters and so on.

Martial arts - specifically I practice Wadu Ryo karate.

Swimming

Archery - Longbow

Reading - Mostly fantasy and sci-fi, a few technical and history books or books on whatever my interest happens to be then.

Volunteering - I try to help young people into work.

Music - I play the piano. Well, technically a keyboard at the moment.

Wood work - Pretty rare these days since I got my house the way I want it, but I still make little things from time to time. Really more my boyfriend's thing these days than mine though.

Computer games - I enjoy strategy games, RPGs, and things where you can build stuff.

Camping/Backpacking. Chilling with my dog. Gardening. Photography. Painting.

I live in Los Angeles. My routine is very routine, but I like it that way.

Morning weekday routine: Get up, exercise, eat breakfast, shoot some arrows (hence the username), go to work

At work hobbies: Table tennis, and we have a crew that does calisthenics at the park below work

Night: Come home, chill with wife, sleep

Weekends: Archery in the morning, gym with the wife in the afternoon, usually go to dinner in the evening.

I used to have more hobbies, but I found that the routine is liberating in a strange way. I don't have to think about what I need to do, I just do the same things week in week out and try to get really good at them.

Where do you practice Archery in LA?

Pasadena Roving Archers

rovingarchers.com

Mapping in OpenStreetMap - goes well with a side order of cycling for fun and transport (and a dose of downloading the planet data and hacking at them, bringing me back to programming in a roundabout way :))

me too! where do you edit?

I lift weights. I do weight lifting 6 days a week, Monday through Saturday, as soon as I wake up.

My priories in life are:

- Fitness.

- Family.

- Work.

It sounds a bit rough, but fitness is what keeps me grounded. I'm by no means at my goal, but bodybuilding is something that is incredibly fun and relaxing to do. It requires a ton of energy, but the discipline gives me a great feeling through the rest of the day, and makes me feel -- powerful.

It's been a huge confidence booster, and it's been fun to focus on physical development as well as personal development -- it helps balance out my life.

Bouldering (really good for programmers as a prevention of back issues or RSI, imho), sailing, hiking, cycling, figuring out how much beer can I drink in a single night every now and then

Find a side project you really like; ideally it should have some kind of goal attached. My recent project were:

1) Build a pair of kevlar canoes and explore the local waterways.

2) Hiking, often just to stay in shape for vacations. My wife isn't a fan of relaxing vacations.

3) Gardening: has the added benefit of producing amazing vegetables for little money.

4) Writing iOS games, or working on the data acquisition system for my "business". This is looking more like a hobby than a home business every day.

Spending QT with my kids/wife, working out (MMA), tinkering with Arduino and multirotors, movies, hiking.

These days I both work a day job and am a startup founder, and I don't do a whole lot other than work, between the two. But when I find (or make) a small bit of spare time, I like to do things like:

1. Read - fiction (horror, sci-fi, thriller/suspense, mystery, etc.) and various topics in non-fiction: physics, cosmology, history, economics, biographies, etc.

2. Mountain bike. I haven't been riding much lately, but this is one of my favorite outdoor activities when the weather is nice.

3. BMX - I still pull out my old BMX bike from time to time and do a little dorking around, street riding.

4. Road biking. I mainly only ride my road bike for cross-training purposes, but I like to get in a few miles here and there.

5. Hike and/or trail run. - I sometimes go hike or run, mostly on some of the same trails I MTB on. Plus a few nearby trails that are open to foot traffic, but not bikes.

6. Concerts - I love live music, and I try to make it to a concert every now and then. The last one I hit up was Trans-Siberian Orchestra back in November. But I like pretty much anything heavy-metal or hard-rock. From Steel Panther to Motley Crue to Tyr or Anthrax, whatever.

7. Dining out - I'm not exactly a hardcore "foodie" but I enjoy trying novel cuisine and having a good meal at a nice restaurant. So exploring new places to eat is something I like to do, especially when traveling. This week has been a good example - I've been in San Francisco all week (I live in Chapel Hill, NC) so I've had a chance to sample a Peruvian restaurant, a Czech restaurant, a place that specializes in garlic, etc.

8. I try to hang out at the local hackerspace[1] a little. Often when I'm there I'm actually working on the startup, but sometimes I like to go in and just tinker and play around a bit. I bought a few microcontroller / SBC boards (Arduino, rPi, BeagleBone) and a bunch of discrete components and shit, and built a monster breadboard with an integrated powersupply using an old PC ATX power supply. Sometimes I just go in and work on learning to build weird electronic circuits and stuff.

Outside of that, I dunno... does reading HN count as a hobby? Or watching TV shows and movies? I squeeze in a couple of "go to the theater" for a new release deals a year, and watch a movie on Netflix or Amazon Prime from time to time, or rewatch one of my old favorites on DVD. shrug

[1]: http://www.splatspace.org/

I also live in the Bay Area (SF). Here's a small sampling of things I do when I'm not working:

* Write. Every weekday morning, I go to a coffee shop downtown and write for 30-60 minutes. I've written two full-length novels and two novellas so far, though they are all as-of-yet unpublished. Someday...

* Run. I run 3-4 nights per week, either along Embarcadero or through Golden Gate Park. I started off with the Couch to 5K program in January 2012 and I've worked up to four half-marathons in the last 12 months.

* Disc golf. There's a disc golf course in Golden Gate Park. Grab a beginner set (20 bucks from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Innova-Disc-Golf-3-Disc-Colors/dp/B000...), grab a friend, and go play. It's super fun.

* Nerd Nite. http://sf.nerdnite.com - 8 bucks. It's like the Discovery Channel -- with beer! (Side note: it's also where I met my girlfriend, and I go every month.)

* Rock climbing - check out Planet Granite (http://www.planetgranite.com/) or Mission Cliffs (http://www.touchstoneclimbing.com/mission-cliffs)

* Meetups - I've attended a dozen Meetups, including the SF Rust meetup. Very fun way to meet new people.

* Biking - Go to Roaring Mouse bikes in Crissy Field (http://www.roaringmousecycles.com/) and buy a bike. Then bike to work, bike to Golden Gate Park, bike across the GG bridge to Sausalito, to Tiburon, to Marin. There are a million awesome places to bike in the Bay Area, and there are huge communities around it. It's something you can do by yourself or with a group. Super fun.

* Anything from sf.funcheap.com. Like the site says, it's a list of fun, cheap things to do in the Bay Area.

* Take online classes (http://coursera.org). I'm currently taking the Machine Learning course and the Compilers course. It's very fun to learn new things!

* Become a Stormtroooper (http://www.goldengategarrison.com) - I'm not a member, but I know a lot of people who build their own Stormtrooper armor and then do volunteer activities with the 501st (the official Stormtrooper organization). Very cool way to give back to the community, especially if you're a Star Wars geek!

* Volunteer! There's a great organization in the city called One Brick (http://sfbay.onebrick.org/). You basically pick an event and just show up. It's volunteering a la carte! You're not making long term commitments -- just one event at a time. And you meet TONS of good, kind-hearted people. It's a win/win!

* And being Hacker News, I would be remiss if I didn't mention: start your own business. Find a problem domain you know something about, and solve that problem. Get out there, meet some co-founders, crank out some code, save the world, and get the cheerleader. Or maybe it was save the cheerleader? Whatever.

* And so much more. I do all of the above things regularly (sometimes daily, sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly), but there are a huge list of things I just don't have the time or memory to mention. There's a whole world out there. Get outside and explore!

Good luck!

This was a really complete answer. Just to not repeat and complete it with a couple of new things:

-You might get some interesting and fun things in here: California Academy of Sciences and The Exploratorium. Every Thursdays they have special events.

-This is another website where you can find something: http://www.sfweekly.com/

If you want to socialize www.meetup.com (already told by Jemaclus) is great. You can also organize or find meetups to programme instead of programme alone for example. There are meetups for whatever think you want to think, so just try some of them until you find something and some people you like!

I can't believe I forgot to mention Nightlife at the California Academy of Sciences on Thursday nights! GREAT program!

I just realized how depressing it is that I live in Chicago instead of SF as a tech professional.

With that said, comprehensive list. Even though I can't use it, I think it highlights some great activities SFBA HN readers would enjoy.

Chicago is great (albeit in the summer)!

* Run along Lake Michigan

* Check out the super awesome theatre scene in the Loop

* Check out awesome off-Loop theatre companies, too!

* Nerd Nite Chicago! http://chicago.nerdnite.com

* ComedySportz Improv contests! http://comedysportzchicago.com/

* See a Cubs game at Wrigley Field

* Volunteer at One Brick Chicago: http://chicago.onebrick.org

There's a bunch, you just have to go out and find it. :) The problem I had with Chicago (I used to live in Uptown) was that it snows for 9 months outta the year, and you're too cold to actually go out and do anything. And once you get home and get dry/warm, you don't wanna go back out again. That suuuuucks.

The trick was to stop and do these things on the way home from work, so you only go home once! ;)

Thank you :)

I keep thinking of things! There's an awesome group called Berlin-Style Ping Pong League (BSPPL): http://americantripps.com. It's a variation of ping pong designed for large groups. Even if you suck, it's a LOT of fun and a fantastic way to meet people. They have events 2-3 times per week, and there's even a league night (Monday nights) where you form teams and play. It's super fun! Check it out!

Thanks! This is the most exhaustive answer.

Sleeping. Netflix, movie. Day dreaming. Learn to be a chef and just staying home browsing interesting things on the Internet (meme, cats, idk). I am not outgoing. I like my home...

Teaching high school physics and calculus to neighbourhood kids, play guitar and ukulele, hiking small hill near house and contemplating life once in a while.

Exercise, maintain an active dating & social life, other intellectual pursuits (e.g. learning math), waste time on reddit and social media.

Taekwondo, Gaming. Hit me up in the bay if you're down for some martial arts, I can give you the whole tour to see if you like it.

Playing music (both with a band, and composing/recording by myself at home), photography, play and exercise with a border collie.

Writing. Board games. Animé. Occasional club nights (there are a few that I know that seem to attract the right kind of people).

You are not alone. I program some more, read HN or some programming books or watch netflix.

Writing. Seeing art. Running. Biking. Photography. Chess.

Find a significant other.

Sailing, hiking.

browsing hn

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