[HN Gopher] "When the entire household goes to bed, I do curl de...
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       "When the entire household goes to bed, I do curl development for 2
       more hours."
        
       Author : danso
       Score  : 73 points
       Date   : 2021-03-18 17:38 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (twitter.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
        
       | UncleOxidant wrote:
       | I guess I'm not sure what's left to do for a couple of hours
       | every day on curl after 23 years (given that it fits into the
       | unix philosophy of do one thing, but do it well)? Are there that
       | many new features? Lots of bugs to fix? (I wouldn't guess so)
       | Seems like it would only need a couple of hours of
       | maintenance/month by now given the functionality.
        
         | zerocrates wrote:
         | I don't know the details of curl's development, but at least
         | some of it must be just keeping pace with the shifting
         | infrastructure of the internet: HTTP/2/3/QUIC/whatever, changes
         | in TLS and the underlying libraries, that kind of thing.
        
         | touisteur wrote:
         | There's always a new version of HTTP around the corner...
        
       | draw_down wrote:
       | I use curl a lot so I'm glad it works for him. Having a part-time
       | unpaid moonlighting gig doesn't sound like it would work for me
       | personally.
        
       | kissgyorgy wrote:
       | This should not encourage anyone to seriously overturn their
       | work-life balance.
        
       | reedf1 wrote:
       | I find I can enter a flow state with work more easily when I feel
       | like the world is asleep.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | grioghar wrote:
         | I wonder what the science is behind this.
         | 
         | If people are up, I can't lock in; there's a constant
         | distraction somewhere in my mind.
         | 
         | If I'm the only person awake in the house, I seem to hit flow
         | state with ease.
        
         | plumsempy wrote:
         | it has become such a preference for me: silence, dimmed lights,
         | some synthwave music, surrounded by all my machines and a lot
         | of fun.
        
         | matheusmoreira wrote:
         | Same here. It's so relaxing when everyone else is sleeping. All
         | other responsibilities fade away.
        
           | zikzak wrote:
           | This is exactly how I feel. That 1.5 - 2 hours each night
           | when I know no one wants or needs me to do anything is
           | invaluable for me mental health. I know I should get more
           | sleep but I need that time to not resent the fact that I get
           | so little time for "me". I get to work at 4:30am (time zone
           | thing) and do a lot of the primary child care and chores.
           | It's often 8:30pm before I'm done and even then the dogs
           | water bugging me to go out, etc. My wife needs sleep so she
           | heads up early and I just putter or stretch, sometimes I
           | write a little code, or watch part of a show. Feels good.
        
         | rektide wrote:
         | Philip K Dick wrote about being out of the heat of God's light,
         | not feeling the scorching heat of the palm tree garden upon us.
         | I believe it was from one of the VALIS novels but I haven't
         | gone back to dig it up, and could be wrong.
         | 
         | Personally, I find I sometimes have trouble accepting good
         | enough solutions. I want more structure, a better defined
         | start. At night I can drop into a productive flow state with
         | much less resistance. The hours run short; let's seize what we
         | can from the waking hours. As well that "inspiration," I think
         | there is probably a physiological barrier lowering that happens
         | as we go into the night. As we recede from the gods' light, as
         | it were.
        
         | bradstewart wrote:
         | So much this. Specifically (for me), it's the simple
         | understanding that I will not be disturbed for as long as I
         | care to focus, so it's worth the "effort" to get in the zone.
         | Which of course means it only takes 30 seconds to get there.
         | 
         | But the screwed up sleep cycles from years and years of this
         | are starting to take their toll, so I've been trying everything
         | I can to replicate that peace of mind during daylight hours. No
         | silver bullet yet.
        
           | Tade0 wrote:
           | I've found that effective noise-cancelling headphones(e.g.
           | Sony WH1000XM4) help somewhat.
        
           | ashwoods wrote:
           | For a few months my wife had a baking job that required her
           | getting up at 4. I'd get up with her and start to work after
           | breakfast. I'd have the days work before 9:00 standup. More
           | time for sport and cooking. Think it was a healthier
           | lifestyle in total. Social life was impossible though, we
           | couldn't manage to stay awake long enough to meet up with
           | friends. And impossible to maintain once she switched to
           | another shift.
        
       | the_cat_kittles wrote:
       | cURL and VLC, not to mention linux etc... really call into
       | question for me the idea that market forces are necessary or even
       | beneficial to good software. curious to hear what i may be
       | missing by making this inference though.
        
         | r0s wrote:
         | Maybe the two are related. IT work makes demands of your mind
         | but not your body, so we're all up at night, not tired from a
         | days work.
         | 
         | I'd imagine manual laborers sleep much more soundly, and are
         | less likely to code in their down time. (but maybe!)
        
       | sparrish wrote:
       | With 7 kids and working from home, my most productive work hours
       | are after everybody goes to bed.
       | 
       | Why waste those precious 'awake' hours on code when I can be
       | enjoying my family?
        
       | hnrodey wrote:
       | I've had a few personal projects where I've spent several hours
       | in the evening working to get it off the ground. What I've found
       | is that my mind is so activated/stimulated that I then struggle
       | to even fall asleep as the code is still dancing in my head. It's
       | a real trade-off I have to make - stay up late to begin with to
       | code on something and then another 45-60 mins to even fall
       | asleep.
        
         | ed_elliott_asc wrote:
         | Get up an hour before everyone else and work in the morning
        
           | lazyasciiart wrote:
           | Then the trade-off is getting up an hour before I want to
           | start work so that my mind can _start_ moving.
        
         | globular-toast wrote:
         | A few times I've had it affect my dreams. I was working on a
         | toy OS a couple of years back. Similar to the OP I would work
         | on it for a couple of hours every night after my girlfriend
         | went home. One time after I was working on virtual memory I had
         | a dream where I was in memory and there pointers and stuff. It
         | was really weird.
        
           | UncleOxidant wrote:
           | I've definitely had it effect my dreams. But I've also found
           | solutions to bugs by sleeping.
        
       | ktpsns wrote:
       | I also enjoy this special time in the night. It's just 11pm in
       | central europe. But I also know my child goes up tomorrow morning
       | at 7am the latest, and if I keep working until 3 or 4am (which I
       | regularly do), I will have a very bad next day hangover. It's the
       | constant problem with too little time...
        
         | after_care wrote:
         | Are you concerned about the health or cognitive complications
         | associated with sleep deprivation?
        
       | beforeolives wrote:
       | Now I just wish that I had a project that I could do this for. Or
       | that I was the kind of person who can keep up this type of work
       | for so many years.
        
         | Avalaxy wrote:
         | How about any hobby projects from Kaggle, advent of code or
         | something like that? I find those things very refreshing after
         | my mundane day-job.
        
           | jxramos wrote:
           | yah if you have the drive I think there's lists of projects
           | open and welcoming to beginners etc. I don't know of any good
           | curated lists but a quick search led to..
           | 
           | * https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/08/03/getting-started-
           | with-c... * https://www.firsttimersonly.com/ *
           | https://opensource.guide/how-to-contribute/ *
           | https://github.com/MunGell/awesome-for-beginners
        
       | albntomat0 wrote:
       | I get up an hour or so early on most days to work on a personal
       | project before my normal dev job.
       | 
       | I find it's really helped my mental health, especially when work
       | can be a bit frustrating (in entirely normal ways)
        
       | bhaak wrote:
       | Working 2 hours a day when nobody is bothering you and you have
       | peace of mind to concentrate is tremendously valuable.
       | 
       | Additionally doing that for 23 years, you can get done a lot of
       | work.
        
         | tartoran wrote:
         | Especially when those 2 hours are enough to get the day
         | workload done:)
        
       | annoyingnoob wrote:
       | I used to do this for my day job. Some of that late night code
       | was pretty bad upon review the next day.
        
       | globular-toast wrote:
       | I did most of my computer science studies at night when the whole
       | world was asleep. I have quite fond memories of finally finishing
       | a piece of work as the sun was coming up and settling down to
       | sleep at 6am. It was terribly unhealthy, but I learnt so much.
        
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       (page generated 2021-03-18 23:00 UTC)