HN

Comments (43)

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  mrandish
  The definition perfectly describes how I started out in computers in 1981. Brought home a 4K, 8-bit computer from Radio Shack that I could barely afford and hooked it to the TV. Had never touched a computer before, zero prior knowledge and only had the manual in the box (which was surprisingly good). No one I'd ever met owned a computer at home or used one at work and I'd never really considered that you could make money with computers. I just thought the games seemed fun and the idea of learning about programming seemed cool. Turns out typing in long listings from B&W hobbyist zines and then finding all the typos was a fine way to learn.Teaching myself assembler was harder because I had no docs. I was so clueless I actually looked up Motorola in the phone book and called to ask where I could get a manual. The sales rep who answered the phone must have taken pity on me because he mailed the CPU manual for free. I still have the purple reference card and remember the common opcodes by heart (https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Datasheets/M...)The first time I made money was about 18 months later when I wrote a pretty handy disk utility program. Stayed up all Friday night finishing it. Copied onto floppies I sold for $5 at the local user's group Saturday morning. Made $140 and got my first 28 customers. That was enough to get me hooked on making software and selling it. ~40 years, three startups, over a dozen products, hundreds of good people employed, a couple million customers and two PC Magazine Product of the Year awards later - I regret nothing. Started on a lark to learn and have fun. Much was learned, fun was had. Wonderful journey - highly recommend.
• prophesi
  Recreational programming used to be one of the rubrics to hire a software developer. If you have an intrinsic motivation to code, it would often be more valuable than your credentials. That's why junior devs would push up sites showcasing their resume of random projects they've done outside of education in order to give them an edge over their competition. Some companies would even encourage some time on the clock for working on side projects to prevent burnout.At the same time, some of the workers in the industry were disgruntled that you were expected to enjoy coding in your spare time to keep up. While some truly just wanted to do it because they were good at it, and would rather turn off the software dev brain after work to do other things they enjoy in life.With the advent of high-performing LLM's for coding, though, it seems more important to showcase how you can harness AI for your recreational projects than the projects themselves. It's a bit of a catch-22 for junior devs though.I still think it's good rubric to get into programming if you like to do it recreationally, but these are just a few of my thoughts on how it can be problematic.
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  smnplk
  Shout out to Tsoding [1]. He is my favorite recreational programmer.[1] - https://www.youtube.com/@TsodingDaily
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  passive
  I did not like how this handled scrolling, made my navigation feel constrained. Maybe I was supposed to use the keyboard to navigate? It doesn't seem particularly clear.
• sonderotis
  Loved this presentation. I personally know the presenter and he presented it at a hackathon :)
• xyzzy_apps
  If painters have a canvas then programmers have a buffer.
• jan_m_savage
  maybe use a shade of gray on black bg? white is too hard on the eyes.
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  monkmartinez
  Thats me!!!! More than 20 years of hobby programming.It has never been a better time to be a recreational programmer and I have never been more excited with all the changes! As someone that started making html pages with dial-up, I am just gobsmacked with LLM's! Programming has helped me immensely in my career as a professional firefighter and I hope to have a second act in tech... we'll see!
• GMoromisato
  Recreational programming is great! I'm always reinventing the wheel because it's more fun for me to (e.g.,) write my own XML parser than to learn some library.But, IMHO, the difference between writing programs for fun and writing programs that other people find valuable is like the difference between masturbating and making babies. The former is fun, the latter is fulfilling.There is nothing wrong with having fun. But if you ever find yourself unsatisfied with all your half-built projects, maybe consider writing software that other people value or even love.Yes, it can be frustrating to try (and often fail) to satisfy others. But seeing someone enjoying your software is an amazing feeling. It makes you feel proud, useful, and talented all at once.
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  Hydraulix989
  Too bad it is all over after this year because AI killed it all :(
• LastTrain
  This describes me, or described me - AI has brought on some existential feelings about programming as a hobby for the moment.
• mintflow
  Like the points in this presentation, recently I kept thinking it seems I need find the joy of fiddling and learning, not build some thing for money but for fun only.Have been used some spare time to learn common lisp and write a manual project, still use web based AI as a quick search method.But I managed to learn some common lisp and how to do cffi in common lisp and- use gtk4 cffi binding to start a GUI app - write a ghostty cffi to encode/decode terminal escape sequences - write a libssh2 cffi to communicate with a ssh serverHope I can build a minimal SSH Terminal using common lisp to keep on experiment and exploration
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  markus_zhang
  I’m definitely strong type 2, strong in the sense of I don’t care about activities of other types, not in the sense that I’m very good at programming.I have a bunch of abandoned repos. I used to want to finish some of them, so perhaps I can show them to some people and get a in-domain job, but recently I realized that it is probably impossible for me to do so. I don’t have success because I don’t chase it. I chase fun and that’s what I should expect, not other things like career switch or monetary rewards.
• vitalnodo
  Nice presentation, I've been asking myself about exactly this lately. Speaking for myself, I like to build a small copy of some big project, and then I put big hopes on it and start feeling guilty that it's unfinished. It turns into a kind of ban on picking up anything else, while the big one keeps getting put off too. And here there are so many different styles and approaches laid out.
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  bitwize
  A Proustian "eating the madeleine" moment occurred when I booted my MiSTer into TI-99/4A mode and began typing programs in TI BASIC, redefining characters and drawing little images with them on screen. In the midst of a tech hellscape, I suddenly remembered why I loved programming to begin with.
• sublinear
  > Style 4: The Problem SolverI was looking for this one. It's far beyond a mere "style". It breaks the entire premise.Being a "problem solver" means you live with the code you write on a daily basis the same way as anyone with any other skill such as woodworking or sewing/knitting.For the people who think writing code (without AI) is so hard that they make it a separate "thing" away from their usual life, I have to also wonder whether they can cook their own breakfast.
• vandyswa
  Painful website, tho