Having a life and programming,a oxymoron
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Hellow fellows CPians, I married recently(setember last year), and if before i married i could code and study for endless nights, for instance breaking my head in C++,Com and multithreading issues, now that I'm married, I never got to do this :eek: , my wife is always bugging to go to bed earlier, she likes to talk a lot in bed, really :-O , but I'm fucking missing all the endless night coding all night long, doing C++ and ATL labs and alike and trying to find a solution :(( To worse the things i'm currently programming in TCL(kinda of perl) and javascript full time X| , so i only could read the technical books about the stuff i like on the train to work :(( (I've spend to much money on programming tech stuff, i admit) So after a lot of thought, I decided to get up 1 1/2 - 2 hours early every day to code a Distributed Program using sockets programming , multithreading and patterns to run on Win32 and linux(i'll get beaten for this :-O ), just to amuse myself :omg: , is this normal , isn't this a disease :confused: , why can't I live a normal life without the need to break my fucking head off ? And why, we many times, have so little spare time, coding afterhours to try to keep the dealine, missing the time to be with the people we love, and after the tiring time passes :confused: , we still love what we do and can't doing a regular mindless job ? Why God, why ? Cheers, and to all of you(CPIANS) keep the good work , on keeping the CodeProject one of the best(if not The BEST) programming portal on all the web, and the most addictive too :omg: Joao Vaz
Sorry to break this to you, mate, but you're doomed. Obviously, I'm half-joking, but while you're married you're going to have to accept that you no longer have control over your life because it's gone from a "me" context to a "we" context. Trust me. I know of what I speak. The first gig I ever had was back in '85. I worked in Amsterdam for Holiday On Ice. The last #2 tram ran from the central station to the Honeywell building (and back) at 2:30am. Literally (no exageration) my biggest decision in life was whether or not go home at 2:30 or pull another all-nighter. I would literally go home so exhausted that I would fall on a mattress on the floor (never even bought a bed - why?), sleep for a few hours, get up, shower and do all over again every day of the week. Hell, I about fell out of my chair the first time I came to states and someone interviewing me remarked "We work a lot of hours around here. Sometimes up to 60 a week." Sounded like vacation to me :) Anyway, while I did "slow down" to 80-90 hour weeks, I basically kept this up for the better part of 6 years until I (somehow) met the woman I married. Needless to say that's when it all changed (just as you're experiencing). I now have two children, a wife and an ex-wife to take care of so while I do work it will never as before because I made a commitment to share my life with another person - not just a paycheck. There's no doubt in my mind that I was a much better code back then than now. However, I was also extremely unhappy and basically hidding from the world in my work. Now I'm not nearly as low-level as I used to be, but I'm a much happier person and actually have stories to tell my kids that don't revolve around semi-colon delimited lines. I guess we all have to find that middle ground that we can live with. By the way, one last tidbit of advice, never fall into the trap of ignoring the ones you love for "one more deadline" or "one more project" because it never ends. There's always another project to get done, another job to try and land. So you blow a deadline? Five years from now you'll scarcely remember the project. Learning this particular lesson cost me my first marriage. Cheers, Tom Archer Author, Inside C# Best mini-putt score = 22
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Wow :-D , Chris Losinger wrote: 1/2 the time i get up after she's asleep and creep back to the computer for a couple more hours of hacking Cool, nice one , i would seriously thinking in doing this :) Chris Losinger wrote: watching TV, i'll often get up during commercials to check my email or start a build :omg: This is a very valid reason to go the computer Thank you, i'll digest your knowlegde of a married man and give a try :) Joao Vaz
Well you don't have to be married to have that experience, I live with my girl friend in the same flat and I am facing the "exactly" same situation. It is really hard to make another person understand, who's not into IT, why this constant tech book reading and source code patching (sometimes only alignments and comments) is needed. I am a signature virus! Help me spread and copy me to your sig! Ooops I am infected
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Sorry to break this to you, mate, but you're doomed. Obviously, I'm half-joking, but while you're married you're going to have to accept that you no longer have control over your life because it's gone from a "me" context to a "we" context. Trust me. I know of what I speak. The first gig I ever had was back in '85. I worked in Amsterdam for Holiday On Ice. The last #2 tram ran from the central station to the Honeywell building (and back) at 2:30am. Literally (no exageration) my biggest decision in life was whether or not go home at 2:30 or pull another all-nighter. I would literally go home so exhausted that I would fall on a mattress on the floor (never even bought a bed - why?), sleep for a few hours, get up, shower and do all over again every day of the week. Hell, I about fell out of my chair the first time I came to states and someone interviewing me remarked "We work a lot of hours around here. Sometimes up to 60 a week." Sounded like vacation to me :) Anyway, while I did "slow down" to 80-90 hour weeks, I basically kept this up for the better part of 6 years until I (somehow) met the woman I married. Needless to say that's when it all changed (just as you're experiencing). I now have two children, a wife and an ex-wife to take care of so while I do work it will never as before because I made a commitment to share my life with another person - not just a paycheck. There's no doubt in my mind that I was a much better code back then than now. However, I was also extremely unhappy and basically hidding from the world in my work. Now I'm not nearly as low-level as I used to be, but I'm a much happier person and actually have stories to tell my kids that don't revolve around semi-colon delimited lines. I guess we all have to find that middle ground that we can live with. By the way, one last tidbit of advice, never fall into the trap of ignoring the ones you love for "one more deadline" or "one more project" because it never ends. There's always another project to get done, another job to try and land. So you blow a deadline? Five years from now you'll scarcely remember the project. Learning this particular lesson cost me my first marriage. Cheers, Tom Archer Author, Inside C# Best mini-putt score = 22
Tom, thank you very much for your advise :-D Tom Archer wrote: There's always another project to get done, another job to try and land. So you blow a deadline? Five years from now you'll scarcely remember the project. Learning this particular lesson cost me my first marriage. A wise advice from a wise person :) Tom , i'm very curious for Inside C# 2nd edition , i don't own the first, but the second appears to be much more appealing. The link http://www.thecodechannel.com/InsideCSharp2EdNotes.asp ,seriously denotes that the Tom Archer wrote: Now I'm not nearly as low-level as I used to be is a bit far away from the truth , especially the msil code at the end of each chapter ;P Back, on the serious side again thanks again, and best wishes of sucess to Inside C# 2nd :) Joao Vaz
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Well you don't have to be married to have that experience, I live with my girl friend in the same flat and I am facing the "exactly" same situation. It is really hard to make another person understand, who's not into IT, why this constant tech book reading and source code patching (sometimes only alignments and comments) is needed. I am a signature virus! Help me spread and copy me to your sig! Ooops I am infected
Martin Bohring wrote: It is really hard to make another person understand, who's not into IT, why this constant tech book reading and source code patching (sometimes only alignments and comments) is needed Yeap, Martin i totally agree with you, but it's life, we must see that computers it's not the central of his life for many people, and we must accept this :) Check Tomas Archer response , it have a lot of very valid advice that comes from his experience. Cheers, Joao Vaz
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Joao Vaz wrote: Hobby projects? That'd be nice. Not gonna happen for the next 18 years or so , this is to dramatic to me .. Jamie, have fun educating your baby, she truly deserves your energy I'm kidding of course. Right now we're pretty much on 18-hour baby-entertainment duty. When she's awake, one of us has her, and the other is trying desperately to get done that which we meant to do yesterday. :) Once she starts to entertain herself, and once she starts sleeping more than 4 consecutive hours at night, things will return to a pseudo-normal state. Don't get me wrong - I want nothing more than to raise a happy healthy kidlet. But I still get a little envious of you guys who keep up your hobby projects. :) J
It gets worse before it gets better. My youngest will be two in 4 months. Right now he is the master of disaster. :eek: I have trouble keeping up with him. I'm thinking when my kids are teenagers I'll have more time. They won't want anything to do with me. The way I look at it, I only have a few years to be with my kids and after they grow up I'll have the rest of my life to do whatever I want. So I try to enjoy the time I have with them. Cathy Life's uncertain, have dessert first!
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Well you don't have to be married to have that experience, I live with my girl friend in the same flat and I am facing the "exactly" same situation. It is really hard to make another person understand, who's not into IT, why this constant tech book reading and source code patching (sometimes only alignments and comments) is needed. I am a signature virus! Help me spread and copy me to your sig! Ooops I am infected
Well then the natural solution would be to have a girlfriend being in IT, too. But after all, I think this is really a bad idea. Need someone with a "real life" to talk about non-computer things. -- See me: www.magerquark.de
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Well then the natural solution would be to have a girlfriend being in IT, too. But after all, I think this is really a bad idea. Need someone with a "real life" to talk about non-computer things. -- See me: www.magerquark.de
Uwe Keim wrote: But after all, I think this is really a bad idea. No, not bad at all. I'm testing this solution about 9 years now. Of course, it helps when she has slightly different IT skills and interests. Tomasz Sowinski -- http://www.shooltz.com
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Hellow fellows CPians, I married recently(setember last year), and if before i married i could code and study for endless nights, for instance breaking my head in C++,Com and multithreading issues, now that I'm married, I never got to do this :eek: , my wife is always bugging to go to bed earlier, she likes to talk a lot in bed, really :-O , but I'm fucking missing all the endless night coding all night long, doing C++ and ATL labs and alike and trying to find a solution :(( To worse the things i'm currently programming in TCL(kinda of perl) and javascript full time X| , so i only could read the technical books about the stuff i like on the train to work :(( (I've spend to much money on programming tech stuff, i admit) So after a lot of thought, I decided to get up 1 1/2 - 2 hours early every day to code a Distributed Program using sockets programming , multithreading and patterns to run on Win32 and linux(i'll get beaten for this :-O ), just to amuse myself :omg: , is this normal , isn't this a disease :confused: , why can't I live a normal life without the need to break my fucking head off ? And why, we many times, have so little spare time, coding afterhours to try to keep the dealine, missing the time to be with the people we love, and after the tiring time passes :confused: , we still love what we do and can't doing a regular mindless job ? Why God, why ? Cheers, and to all of you(CPIANS) keep the good work , on keeping the CodeProject one of the best(if not The BEST) programming portal on all the web, and the most addictive too :omg: Joao Vaz
Joao Vaz wrote: she likes to talk a lot in bed, IS that all ? You poor guy... Joao Vaz wrote: I'm f***ing missing all the endless night coding all night long Talk about that, send her to sleep, then get up again. TCL - yuck. Joao Vaz wrote: why can't I live a normal life without the need to break my f***ing head off ? You're not normal, you're a programmer. Live with it. I come home every night, play with my kids for an hour, then either get on the PC or go to bed with a programming book. We went on three weeks holiday - I learned the insides of iostreams. I don't think our families miss out that much. 'normal' people watch tv night after night and eat pretzels. If you're anything like me, you look to make *real* family time, and then go on to do some work. Christian The tragedy of cyberspace - that so much can travel so far, and yet mean so little.
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i'm in a similar situation (though married for 5+ years now). my wife tries to get me to go to bed the same time she does, but 1/2 the time i get up after she's asleep and creep back to the computer for a couple more hours of hacking. she usually doesn't know until the next day when i look like hell, from not getting enough sleep. plus, when we're watching TV, i'll often get up during commercials to check my email or start a build or tweak a few lines here and there. she says i'm "obsessed". i agree, but don't think it's a bad thing :) there's just not enough time in the day for all the things i want to do. -c
Smaller Animals Software, Inc. You're the icing - on the cake - on the table - at my wake. Modest Mouse
Chris Losinger wrote: plus, when we're watching TV, i'll often get up during commercials to check my email or start a build or tweak a few lines here and there. she says i'm "obsessed". i agree, but don't think it's a bad thing *laugh* On the odd time that I am coerced into watching TV, or if I put a DVD on, I usually am queuing files and getting up from time to time to check them, check my mail and check CP. Christian The tragedy of cyberspace - that so much can travel so far, and yet mean so little.
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As one other poster mentioned, try having kids. I have a 2-month old little girl at home, and damned if I have enough time or energy to take a nice crap. Hobby projects? That'd be nice. Not gonna happen for the next 18 years or so... :) But I wouldn't trade my life for any others! J
Kids are great, because they exaust your wife. I spend two hours with them between work and home projects ( which start when they go to bed ), and the wife is too tired to want my company from looking after them !!!! Christian The tragedy of cyberspace - that so much can travel so far, and yet mean so little.
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Well you don't have to be married to have that experience, I live with my girl friend in the same flat and I am facing the "exactly" same situation. It is really hard to make another person understand, who's not into IT, why this constant tech book reading and source code patching (sometimes only alignments and comments) is needed. I am a signature virus! Help me spread and copy me to your sig! Ooops I am infected
One partial solution that I can highly recomend is a Notebook with a Wireless LAN card. That way you can surf, check email, connect to you dev machine etc. while sitting watching TV with you're loved one. Don't tell anyone but we have two of these, and both sit and surf and watch TV. Sad isn't it. ;) Neville Franks, Author of ED for Windows. www.getsoft.com
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Hellow fellows CPians, I married recently(setember last year), and if before i married i could code and study for endless nights, for instance breaking my head in C++,Com and multithreading issues, now that I'm married, I never got to do this :eek: , my wife is always bugging to go to bed earlier, she likes to talk a lot in bed, really :-O , but I'm fucking missing all the endless night coding all night long, doing C++ and ATL labs and alike and trying to find a solution :(( To worse the things i'm currently programming in TCL(kinda of perl) and javascript full time X| , so i only could read the technical books about the stuff i like on the train to work :(( (I've spend to much money on programming tech stuff, i admit) So after a lot of thought, I decided to get up 1 1/2 - 2 hours early every day to code a Distributed Program using sockets programming , multithreading and patterns to run on Win32 and linux(i'll get beaten for this :-O ), just to amuse myself :omg: , is this normal , isn't this a disease :confused: , why can't I live a normal life without the need to break my fucking head off ? And why, we many times, have so little spare time, coding afterhours to try to keep the dealine, missing the time to be with the people we love, and after the tiring time passes :confused: , we still love what we do and can't doing a regular mindless job ? Why God, why ? Cheers, and to all of you(CPIANS) keep the good work , on keeping the CodeProject one of the best(if not The BEST) programming portal on all the web, and the most addictive too :omg: Joao Vaz
I'll be happily married for 15 years this month, with two step-daughters both in their early/mid twenties. I think the key is just to keep balance. Right now, for you, you must balance work, wife, wife's school, and hobbies. If any one gets out of whack with the others ... problems, coming in any number of forms: wife is mad, boss is upset, personal frustration, etc. Like a three-legged stool, all the legs must have approximately equal lengths in order for the stool not to fall over. When one dominates the others, the stool falls. Keeping balance, of course, involves making choices, and those choices reflect your values and priorities. If you value your wife and your marriage and your partnership, then hiding away doing personal computer work all the time doesn't reflect that value. Maybe she'll be alright with a night or two each week, if the others are spent doing "home" things or being with her. Maybe early Saturday morning would be good, as she could be out shopping or doing something that is just for her. Of course, even with kids, it's still all about the balance that works for you and your priorities. Dave "You can say that again." -- Dept. of Redundancy Dept.
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i'm in a similar situation (though married for 5+ years now). my wife tries to get me to go to bed the same time she does, but 1/2 the time i get up after she's asleep and creep back to the computer for a couple more hours of hacking. she usually doesn't know until the next day when i look like hell, from not getting enough sleep. plus, when we're watching TV, i'll often get up during commercials to check my email or start a build or tweak a few lines here and there. she says i'm "obsessed". i agree, but don't think it's a bad thing :) there's just not enough time in the day for all the things i want to do. -c
Smaller Animals Software, Inc. You're the icing - on the cake - on the table - at my wake. Modest Mouse
Chris Losinger wrote: 1/2 the time i get up after she's asleep and creep back to the computer for a couple more hours of hacking :-D This just happened to me last night. My wife "caught me" on the computer getting some extra work done at 2:45 in the morning. Somehow I just can't sleep when I get ideas in my head. I have to get it done before I forget. Is this some sort of psychological mechanism in us men? My wife can't understand how I can be on the computer and code all day at work and then come home and code just for fun all evening and into the night. As strange as it is at least we can say we are doing what we love. :-D You don't see too many McDonald's employees staying up til 3 in the morning working out new and improved methods of flipping burgers... Why not throw away a dime? I throw away ten pennies all the time.
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Joao Vaz wrote: she likes to talk a lot in bed, IS that all ? You poor guy... Joao Vaz wrote: I'm f***ing missing all the endless night coding all night long Talk about that, send her to sleep, then get up again. TCL - yuck. Joao Vaz wrote: why can't I live a normal life without the need to break my f***ing head off ? You're not normal, you're a programmer. Live with it. I come home every night, play with my kids for an hour, then either get on the PC or go to bed with a programming book. We went on three weeks holiday - I learned the insides of iostreams. I don't think our families miss out that much. 'normal' people watch tv night after night and eat pretzels. If you're anything like me, you look to make *real* family time, and then go on to do some work. Christian The tragedy of cyberspace - that so much can travel so far, and yet mean so little.
Christian Graus wrote: Talk about that, send her to sleep, then get up again Yeap, i see this is a common behaviour of a lot programmers out there :omg: I didn't get up of bed yet on the middle of the night, but it will happen someday ... Christian Graus wrote: You're not normal, you're a programmer Definitely a race apart ... Christian Graus wrote: make *real* family time, and then go on to do some work :omg: And your wife doesn't grumbles with you :omg: Christian Graus wrote: TCL - yuck i can't agree with you more :(( , 4 full months and more 4 to come X| Christian Graus wrote: I learned the insides of iostreams You readed the book "Standard C++ IOStreams and Locales: Advanced Programmer's Guide and Reference" ? Cheers, Joao Vaz
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I'll be happily married for 15 years this month, with two step-daughters both in their early/mid twenties. I think the key is just to keep balance. Right now, for you, you must balance work, wife, wife's school, and hobbies. If any one gets out of whack with the others ... problems, coming in any number of forms: wife is mad, boss is upset, personal frustration, etc. Like a three-legged stool, all the legs must have approximately equal lengths in order for the stool not to fall over. When one dominates the others, the stool falls. Keeping balance, of course, involves making choices, and those choices reflect your values and priorities. If you value your wife and your marriage and your partnership, then hiding away doing personal computer work all the time doesn't reflect that value. Maybe she'll be alright with a night or two each week, if the others are spent doing "home" things or being with her. Maybe early Saturday morning would be good, as she could be out shopping or doing something that is just for her. Of course, even with kids, it's still all about the balance that works for you and your priorities. Dave "You can say that again." -- Dept. of Redundancy Dept.
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Tom, thank you very much for your advise :-D Tom Archer wrote: There's always another project to get done, another job to try and land. So you blow a deadline? Five years from now you'll scarcely remember the project. Learning this particular lesson cost me my first marriage. A wise advice from a wise person :) Tom , i'm very curious for Inside C# 2nd edition , i don't own the first, but the second appears to be much more appealing. The link http://www.thecodechannel.com/InsideCSharp2EdNotes.asp ,seriously denotes that the Tom Archer wrote: Now I'm not nearly as low-level as I used to be is a bit far away from the truth , especially the msil code at the end of each chapter ;P Back, on the serious side again thanks again, and best wishes of sucess to Inside C# 2nd :) Joao Vaz
>>>Tom, thank you very much for your advise You're very welcome. >>> ... the second appears to be much more appealing. The link http://www.thecodechannel.com/InsideCSharp2EdNotes.asp ,seriously denotes that the [Tom Archer wrote: Now I'm not nearly as low-level as I used to be] is a bit far away from the truth , especially the msil code at the end of each chapter <<< LOL! Ok. So I have completely thrown in the towel yet :) >>> Back, on the serious side again thanks again, and best wishes of sucess to Inside C# 2nd <<< Thanks much! I think that you'll see that all of MS Press' books (Richter's, Procise's, mine, etc.) have gone the more internals route. It's going to be interesting to see how this affects sales. Cheers, Tom Archer Author, Inside C# Best mini-putt score = 22
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>>>Tom, thank you very much for your advise You're very welcome. >>> ... the second appears to be much more appealing. The link http://www.thecodechannel.com/InsideCSharp2EdNotes.asp ,seriously denotes that the [Tom Archer wrote: Now I'm not nearly as low-level as I used to be] is a bit far away from the truth , especially the msil code at the end of each chapter <<< LOL! Ok. So I have completely thrown in the towel yet :) >>> Back, on the serious side again thanks again, and best wishes of sucess to Inside C# 2nd <<< Thanks much! I think that you'll see that all of MS Press' books (Richter's, Procise's, mine, etc.) have gone the more internals route. It's going to be interesting to see how this affects sales. Cheers, Tom Archer Author, Inside C# Best mini-putt score = 22
Tom Archer wrote: internals route. It's going to be interesting to see how this affects sales. Tom, it's the best way to increase sales. To be a proficient programmer it helps a lot to know more about the internals of the technology IMHO. And programmers by nature are curious bests :laugh: So, the books sales, i'm positive, will increase, i known what i'm talking because i'll buy yours, I didn't buy the 1st , because of the lack of <> , i was just hoping that you would write a 2nd soon, so i could buy-it :) Cheers, Joao Vaz
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Tom Archer wrote: internals route. It's going to be interesting to see how this affects sales. Tom, it's the best way to increase sales. To be a proficient programmer it helps a lot to know more about the internals of the technology IMHO. And programmers by nature are curious bests :laugh: So, the books sales, i'm positive, will increase, i known what i'm talking because i'll buy yours, I didn't buy the 1st , because of the lack of <> , i was just hoping that you would write a 2nd soon, so i could buy-it :) Cheers, Joao Vaz
>>>And programmers by nature are curious beasts :-D >>> i was just hoping that you would write a 2nd soon, so i could buy-it <<< Almost there. I've done all the chapters. The only thing remaining is a/r (author review) on 2 chapters and the front matter (intro, acknowledgements, etc.) Basically, it means I'll 100% on Monday which should put the book in the stores by May 1. By the way, I'm going to be posting a sample chapter here (split into 2 or 3 digestable chunks) in the next couple of weeks. In addition, Essam Ahmed will be doing a book review and posting it here as well. Cheers, Tom Archer Author, Inside C# Best mini-putt score = 22