Ask HN: What would you hack on an 12-hour flight? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What would you hack on an 12-hour flight?

4 pointsnlstitch13 comments

Imagine that you have 12 hours to fly overseas. Its during the day, so sleeping isn't much of an option...

What would you work on? Take in consideration that the battery of your laptop/tablet/smartphone won't last the whole trip!

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Having done such flights multiple times, here is my suggestion. You will be absolutely brain dead so take dumb monkey work. :-) Do your GTD weekly review. Clear your inbox. Etc.

Having told you that, however, there was a 15 hour flight (Emirates LAX - DXB) when I wrote a 40 page ebook. I couldn't sleep so I just banged it out.

Also, most sane airlines have power outlets. Sane = carriers that are non-U.S. It has been a long time since I have flown an American carrier. So don't worry about power.

Work on something with a small but specific goal. Be it unit tests, programming problems or a simple CRUD app in a new language. You should feel accomplished at the end.

What language would you choose? / Could you learn in such a time frame?

I would probably go with something esoteric or something I have been thinking for a while. For e.g. Erlang, Closure, Go, etc. Yes, it definitely possible to learn and implement the very basic end-to-end webapp in any of the above. You may also look at other frameworks which are presently in vogue like rails, cakephp, or angularjs.

I have a C hobby project I worked on during a couple flights the other week, but if I flew again I'd probably bring this:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Abstract-Algebra-Edition-Mathemat...

. . . along with paper for working the exercises.

If you code normally, I'd say take advantage of the change in context to focus your brain on something completely different. Like designing a conlang or reading the most reviewed Capote works or heck, just finding a couple of people you can talk to if the plane isn't crowded. An overseas flight will have interesting people with interesting stories.

You can work on stuff that don't require any graphical interface, just a REPL, so you could limit the use of your battery:

- project Euler

- 4clojure

- maths and stats stuff

- artificial intelligence

- chat bot

If you have an existing project, maybe you can find a part of it where you can work in complete isolation.

If you are proficient in one mobile technology 12 hours should be enough to build a little app :P

My latest iOS app took me just 20 hours totally. (still waiting for Apple approval)

I read "the tangled web" (web security) on my last long flight. Recommended; search for "hilarious" to find the most painful bits.

sounds boring, but i would probably work on test coverage for existing projects, because i don't need internet for that, and i can stop whenever i run out of battery...

With or without Internet?

without!

You might actually have power though. Check out http://www.seatguru.com/findseatmap/findseatmap.php, you can punch in your flight number and departure date, and it'll tell you which plane you're supposed to be on and what amenities it has, like power outlets and where they are.

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