My projects have me jumping through hoops of a wide variety of technology, talking to people, writing, and even designing graphics. Sometimes I like to sit down and write something simple, as a way to relax.
Sometimes I find my own code projects to be relaxing. The MDL parser I'm working on now is one of them. I don't have any timelines, nor pressure to get it done.
Oddly, the pressure to get something done is one of the reasons why I gave up on my programming language. Perhaps it's the size of the project that makes a difference. My MDL project is small in scope and is useful almost immediately.
I used to code on Twitch streams as well. At first, it was relaxing, but I found an audience took that away somewhat. It wasn't stressful, but it wasn't relaxing either. As I coded the bots to fight others, I could feel people depending on me -- it really made no difference how few there were!
But MDL is relaxing, which leads to a problem other workaholics will identify with. Because it's relaxing, that work part of my brain isn't satisfied and continues questioning whether I should work on it, and often doesn't even let me start working on it. Though, I suppose this is another tale altogether.
Do you code to relax? If yes, then what do you code?
Oldest comments (34)
Right now I'm working on a Hugo theme which I find relaxing.
I'm also working on a tool that watches and compares PDFs for changes. It's a little more hectic than the theme but it's still relaxing.
My code livelihood is fairly intertwined with DEV these days, so my "relaxation" time is often interesting things related to the health and future of the project, as opposed to my day-to-day which is mostly coordinating the important/urgent things for the short term health of the community and sustainability of the business.
Before we went open source, I would spend relaxing time hacking away at little things that needed to happen before we did that. These days, if I sit down to have a relaxing code session, it revolves around "generalization" of the product—where different people can create community platforms based on our work.
For example, this PR serves some immediate value, but my mindset was that it gets us closer to "generalization" by removing hardcoded static pages from the codebase.
What type of PR is this? (check all applicable)
Description
This PR allows admins to generate "pages" about anything, such as "about".
Currently all generated pages live at
/page/:slugin terms of routes, except I did add new functionality to/aboutin order to generate that one with the current about page being the fallback.Eventually everything considered a "page" for community or marketing purposes can live in a model. We will have some questions about how we ultimately want to route everything.
Once this part of what we're doing gets close enough to reality, we'll pull this project in and make it something we talk about and do as "work". For now, I treat it as relaxing "me time" with no deadline or purpose outside of the interesting code arrangement questions.
That's great. I've been on several projects where I was relaxed working on the side-features. It has the added value of keeping spirits up about the necessary work, since it all feels more worthwhile as a whole then.
My coding for relaxation typically revolves around my CodePen. Just the little "Hey is this possible" or playing around with new tech just to get more familiar with it:
or recreating things as closely as I can with CSS (looks better on CodePen or hit the 0.5x button):
(That was a fun project that forced me to learn a lot, plus it blew up on CodePen. 33k views?! What?!)
I find it most relaxing when it's not really related to anything I'm currently working on, but still mentally stimulating and helps me learn.
Playing with animation is fun!
Most definitely. Started playing around with GSAP recently, and holy cow, it's amazing.
Wow! This is really impressive!
Trying to figure out DDD and Go at the same time, I usually code in PHP with Symfony, so I'm always stuck with the same old MVC pattern over and over again.
Right now I am trying to build a simple Jekyll clone in Go, but I am far from having a finished product right now.
But, basically as long as I am learning something new I don't feel tired.
I was in an interview recently that didn’t like the idea of coding to relax. They wanted to see open source contributions, community involvement, and projects showing I know the new shinny things, but also wanted me to talk about the non-tech things I do to relax. That stressed me out. Why can’t silly or fun projects be relaxing?! Glad to see other people like to code to relax!
I wouldn't talk about coding to relax. I do side projects to learn new things, it is funny and not stressful, but I'm still working on my computer.
Relax is something different, and at least in my case doesn't involve technology.
If I need to name a relaxing activity I do on my computer is watching video or reading something, but coding requires attention, even if is not demanding and there are no deadlines.
This 100%
I've been going through past years of adventofcode.com/
It's not unlike most other code challenge websites (leetcode, etc.) but a few things that I like about it:
Right now, I am creating video games as hobby
I'm developing a gem for Ruby :)
github.com/iago-silva/service_it
So far... refactor my old projects -_-
Great question - After a long day at work I try to stay away from all work related projects. The best coding I do to "relax" would be studying new languages, theories, and concepts. I picked up a book on Machine Learning last month and have been engrossed in that, and have also been learning Python on the side (I mostly work in C# and JS frameworks at work). I think getting out of the comfort zone is really important for developers to hone in new schools, expand their knowledge, and also it doesn't feel like work.