Ask HN: How should programmers work

[debamitro]

I have been working as a programmer for over a decade, and recently I have noticed that my best ideas and insights come when I am walking down the road, driving, enjoying a nice view in a city or somewhere I like - they almost _never_ happen when I am working, sitting in front of a monitor and keyboard. Yet, my job (and that of all other engineers in my company and in many other companies) requires me to sit for hours in front of a machine in order to work.

I feel it is high time we the global community of programmers redefine how we should work, and drive that change in companies. Maybe this is a lofty goal, but it has to start with some ideas about how programmers (and other engineers who need to work with software) should work in any company in today's age.

Please enlighten me with your opinions.

[mattbgates]

My best ideas come to me when I'm not focusing on work, but either walking, swimming, biking, or doing something else. Sometimes I will be working on something and get stuck, and I can go to sleep and go back to it later and fix it. Other times, it might take me a week of being away from it to just think outside the box and come up with another way to make it happen. Another thing I like to do is just to scroll through Y Cominbinator's Hacker News and read articles or see what other people are doing. I also tend to take a look at major social media networks and look at the "smaller features" that no one really knows about or that they didn't put a whole lot of time or focus on, and I re-create those and make them better.

For example, I wanted a place that I could post anything on the Internet (plain or HTML) without much trouble.. I didn't want to sign up for an account, I didn't want to put in my email in order to gain access, or connect one of my social media accounts to it, I just wanted to remain anonymous and write something or create a web page and share it with my friends or others on the Internet, simple and straightforward. In my research to see if it existed, I had only found one called pen.io and while I loved it, I saw the value of it, it was still restrictive of my needs. I wanted to use HTML and CSS and even JavaScript if I desired, so I created it. https://mypost.io/

Our best ideas, I think, actually come to us when we're not so tuned in, but rather, tuned out. Programmers should definitely take up a hobby of doing something other than focusing on their work. Start a blog, start a website, read articles, share thoughts and ideas with like-minded people... your money making ideas are there, you just haven't figured out how to fully understand them yet. Having a hobby allows for our brain to think another way, and sometimes, we do have to apply that logic to our programming. Even at work, as a web developer, I can only sit and stare at the computer screen for so long, before I just need to walk around the building 2 or 3 times to feel refreshed again.

[chrisbennet]

This analogy won't make sense to (most) younger people but I think that in order to make new insights you need to take the pressure off. Metaphorically speaking, to "change gears" you need to push the clutch in.

For me, I "load the machine up" like a dishwasher during the day and when I wake up, a lot of times, the machine has come up with the answer overnight. It delivers the answer during my morning shower.