Where's Your Coding Happy Place? 508
jammag writes "Cranking out code — your very best code — requires being in the optimal environment, muses developer Eric Spiegel. He explores the pitfalls and joys of the usual locales, cubicle, home, the beach. He claims he's done his best coding on an airplane. In the end, though, he suggests that the best environment is a matter of the environment inside yourself, your internal mood — and to hell with the cubicle or wherever. You have to be focused on quality, regardless of the idiot clients. It's all inside your mind. Where's your coding happy place?"
A matter of the environment? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lightly sweetened breakfast tea, rainy weather outside, window cracked with a brisk morning breeze.
Oh, yeah, and vim. Emacs can suck it.
Best place != Most pleasant (Score:5, Insightful)
Sad to say, but the "best place" to code in depends on what your goal is.
After the best quality code? The best place is a quiet place, free of distractions, where the problem can be easily and clearly understood.
Want the best mood while coding? That's when you consider the balcony of a beach-front apartment, or a nice table with comfy chairs at a restaurant with a view for the afternoon.
Pick your goals, then come up with what you are after.
The trick is to find a place with a good combination of comfort for long-term developer happiness and contentment and actual good results. So a nice office with full snacks, comfortable chairs, nice lounge, music, being treated with courtesy and respect, decent pay, decent benefits, and having the freedom to develop in a non-restrictive manner, while still being held accountable for the result is a good mix, and that's where most businesses tend.
Including my own.
In my head while driving. (Score:5, Insightful)
For me, it's music, not place. (Score:5, Insightful)
On my floor in the family room... (Score:3, Insightful)
Next to the fireplace, with my son sitting on my back. Doesn't get any better than that. I would have thought it distracting to work from home like this, and instead I think I've written more, and better code, than I have before. Just awesome. One thing I could improve, would be to have some music going... but that's just laziness on my part.
Eww .. those are his best?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Those sound like mostly horrible conditions to work in! :)
Although place is important, time is probably MORE important. And this is where people will differ even more. I know people that will get up at 5am and get most of their "good" work done by 9am. That's not for me. :)
My personal best time is later at night. a) most people are sleeping, so not too many IM distractions. b) it's quiet, the neighbourhood is quiet, wife is most likely asleep, it's quiet. I can think.
In terms of place, most of the time, these night sessions are done in my home office.
Silence (Score:5, Insightful)
The Zone (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't have a place, I have music and caffeine. If I hear old Crystal Method or Orbital, I immediately think of late nights in the zone with Mountain Dew and Code.
The only enemy of "The Zone" were morning birds.
If I heard birds chirping, I knew I didn't have much time left before my mind would go.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Cube, late, quiet, music (Score:5, Insightful)
Best? Coding in my cubicle, from 4-11PM, trance/techno playing at moderate volume, and absolutely no interruptions. Productivity is amazing.
Unfortunately, for no articulable reason I'm required to work 8AM-5PM, interruptions are constant (walk-in/stand-up meetings happening constantly, PA system calling people, factory running across the hall, doors never stay closed. Productivity is ... well ... go figure.
In all seriousness anywhere with a fresh pint. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Beer (Score:1, Insightful)
Stoner mistakes aside, toking relaxes me to the point where I can get really creative and get a lot of stuff done. Only if I could get high at work...
Re:In my head while driving. (Score:2, Insightful)
For me it's not so much a problem losing ideas en route to a computer, but losing the desire to code by the time I've reached it ...
My coding? (Score:5, Insightful)
My office, from 8am-5pm, with soft music playing on the speakers, overhead lights off, desk lights on, door open half way (I'm in a somewhat quiet hallway).
Why 8-5? Because its my job, not my life.
You want me to access my happy place? (Score:2, Insightful)
For starters: Don't make me feel like a criminal because I forgot my access card. Don't hire minimum wage jerks in uniforms to eyeball everyone suspiciously. Don't make me walk past 60 cubes just like mine so that by the time I sit down I feel like the worthless piece of interchangeable shit you obviously think we all are. Don't send me weekly emails reminding me that my every electronic move is logged. Get rid of those freaking eyeballs in the ceiling every 20 feet. Shove your 50 page human resource manual up your ass. Help me forget that working wasn't always like this and doesn't have to be now.
See? I am starting connect with my inner muse already...
A distraction free area. (Score:2, Insightful)
Obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A matter of the environment? (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps my neck elevation angle is insufficient, but if I was in a windowless basement how would I know what the lunar illumination situation was?
In the shower (Score:4, Insightful)
No seriously. I've had some real moments of epiphany whilst mulling over problems from the day before. Sometimes its only when you're away from your keyboard that you start looking at the bigger picture rather than the minutiae of individual classes/methods
Re:A matter of the environment? (Score:3, Insightful)
Damp? No. Cold? Yes. And Winter is a bitch.
Not on topic, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
at work I'm not allowed to listen to music at all.
Your employers are douchebags.
What the crap could it possibly matter if you have an MP3 player stuck in your ears? I'd love to hear somebody actually make a good case for it. If you're a doctor and you have to listen for pages, or a jet pilot who needs to hear audio alarms - fine. But a coder? Give me a break.
This sort of micro managing "you're still in kindergarten" crap always pisses me right off. It insures an unhappy workplace, and that insures poor results. Who wants to do their very best for someone who treats them like a freaking toddler?
Re:Oddly enough... (Score:2, Insightful)
you should be ashamed you are not among them.
The layers should be ashamed that my techniques work!