[segmondy]

No it's not, not if you want to want to claim to be a true professional.

I have never met a professional that only engages in their craft at work only. Professionals practice their craft all time especially outside work.

Work time is game time. Work time is not the time to engage in Research but strictly development. Unless you work for an R&D lab. It is the engaging in research instead of development that's the cause of software projects failing and having all sorts of issue. When it's D time, it's time to simply apply all the best principles that you know, nothing else.

This means, you must practice (research) off hours.

Can you imagine a math professor that only practices mathematics only when they teach? Or a musician that only plays music only during performance?

It's okay to only code at work if you are just a code monkey and not a professional. In that case, don't expect the high rewards of the industry, don't claim to be a "professional" granted that the definition of a professional is one that does it only for money.

Look at the very best in the industry, just think of them, name em. They all code outside of work. Jeff Dean, Norvig, Linus, Stallman, Carmack, Wolfram

[wenham]

I don't think the post is say that you CAN be the next Jeff Dean, Norvig, Linus, Stallman, Carmack, Wolfram etc. etc. by not coding outside of work. I think they are saying that it's OK not code outside of work, its OK not to be in this very top percent of the profession.

What is a 'True Professional' in the context? I don't think you can compare the top 0.01% of any profession to the rest and say this small percentage are the 'True' professionals and the rest are not. Pretty sure my accountant is not doing accounting in his spare time, he is no less a professional for not doing so.

[jdlyga]

Spending 100% of work time coding reminds me of the startup world. Eventually it leads to a culture where people get locked in the same patterns and don't try new things. If you work at a larger company, there's always down time for watching conference videos, side projects, etc. I've found encouraging people to spend some of their work time learning makes for better developers.

[segmondy]

There's no difference between work and living. it's all the same. This work/life balance is crap. Working 100% of the time is bad, but the idea that your only can work in an allocate piece of time for intellectual work is the most ridiculous thing ever. Doesn't matter if you write music, write code, or writing a book. You work when your mind is ready to go. To refuse to work when your brain is ready is a strong signal that you don't have passion for this. If you're engaged in manual labor then sure, but for all intellectual work there's no boundary. It's perfectly NOT okay to preach these rubbish about being mediocre. The interesting thing is the very people who also code anywhere, tend to be very balanced and also enjoy their life outside of coding.

[JohnFen]

> No it's not, not if you want to want to claim to be a true professional.

I disagree, although I suspect that I don't know what you mean by "true professional".

> Look at the very best in the industry, just think of them, name em.

Sure, but you don't have to be the very best in the industry to be a legit professional. By definition, the overwhelming majority of highly skilled engineers are not the very best in the industry.