DEV is in the process of launching a podcast and we'd love for you to be involved! We're recording the episodes in advance, and this week we'd like to know:
What are some of your hobbies outside of coding that have directly or indirectly helped your dev work?
If you'd like to participate, please:
- Call our Google Voice at at +1 (929)500-1513 and leave a message by 4/22 📞
- Send a voice memo to pod@dev.to 🎙
- OR, if you don't want your voice recorded...just leave a comment here and we'll read your response aloud for you 🗣
Thank you!
Oldest comments (31)
Playing rugby. I met so many people through university and club rugby and a lot of my early job opportunities were thanks to people I knew in rugby land.
Reading books about biology, especially about the human, bonobo, chimpanzee and other animals behavior, and how science explain it. That books have been helping me to change my mind and improving my soft skills, and of course work more productive with other people.
One of the obvious ones: Light exercise a few times a week.
Exercise has been proven to have benefits for pretty much everything, including better concentration and focus. I don't actually like exercise so I only do very little. But a little exercise is enough, and any dislike I have is definitely surpassed by the benefits it brings.
Just sent in my voice note! Can't wait for the podcast to launch! 🚀
Writing, a lot of writing. It helps me to write clearer code and better documentation. 🖥️
Cooking is like making a webapp di react
Drawing helps me visualize my UI designs for personal projects.
Reading books (and especially graphic novels) helps me take my mind out of the dev process, get refreshed, and refocus. Another thing that I find relaxing is doing cross-stitch. It is really simple, involves some creativity, and it is like offline pixel-art.
Improv theater has helped me in my professional career as well as just life in general. It teaches you how to get out of your head, have fun, and let yourself fail. Also, a side effect is being more confident speaking in front of people and collaborating in a team. Definitely recommend! Just remember that "improv" is a very broad concept, and differs from theater to theater, so feel free to explore if you are interested.
Drawing helps me to clear my mind and allow new ideas to come in. I want to emphasize that they come in not that I chase them :-)
Woodworking has helped me learn how to really plan a project. Unlike coding, where you find everything you need as the need comes up, working in a physical medium requires you to actually plan something out fully before starting, because you have to buy the materials for it! You don't want to plan everything out and then find that the hardware store doesn't have the lumber you need in stock, or find that the screws you have are too short. If you don't meticulously plan thea small details out, you'll find yourself running to the store a million times and won't actually get to build the thing!
Translating this to software development, it has taught me the value of making diagrams and writing down notes before I ever write a line of code. This could also be TDD, where I first figure out how I want to the use the code as an end user (how the API should look), and then figure out how to make it work like that.
Reading books, watching YouTube and sci-fi movies
Googling random stuffs
Reading about and educating myself on human behavior. It's a hobby and a passion. Collaboration is a productivity multiplier beyond what learning one tech alone can bring.
Design and dev tend to go hand in hand, so having a design background has been helpful. Being able to talk to both groups and get them on the same page, understanding each other had been a key part of my career so far. Understanding design principles can make you a better developer.
I live in probably the best state for hiking ⛰ and have road tripped around great views. Just observing nature and processes in society. Stoic philosophy type books and ideas. Trying to do the hippie meditation thing now 😉
I'm only about 6 months away from confirming to myself that we live in a universe simulation and I want out of the current code being run 😂