Having personal projects.
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I used to have personal (programming) projects. You learn a lot with personal project, I think it's sometimes more valuable than work experience. Not many of my friends (if any or me now) have personal projects.
I manage IT folks and I feel these personal (bench) projects are vital. They build bench programming strength, they allow developers to test out new techniques or new technologies, and they reinforce creativity in solutions. All I ask from my team is that their bench projects should have the potential to have a future use within our company (and that their workload does not suffer due to work done on these projects).
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How many of you do spend time for personal projects?. And how many of you are getting permission from your company to do personal projects ?. I know many of my friends do spend time for their personal projects and publish them in fake names. Do a programmer get sufficient knowledge,if he sticks only with the tasks assigned to him by his employer. I know, most of the programmers in CMM Level 5 companies waste sufficient time in documentation rather than doing coding.
I can't survive without personal projects. It's what makes programming fun when the job isn't. I've been fortunate to work on a number of fun work projects, but when those are gone, it's back to the personal projects to make life worth living. :) As for the amount of time, it really depends. Of course, there are lots of other priorities that have to come first: family, work, community, etc. A friend of mine recommended the 10 minute rule -- "Work on it for at least 10 minutes a day". If you can find 10 minutes to sit down and do something on it, likely that turns into 20 minutes, half hour, etc. and you will get something done on it. Even if you only spend the 10 minutes thinking about it, you're better prepared the next time you do sit down at it. Due to personal projects I've been able to move around in my career by being able to point to these as experience. I was able to enjoy a 10 year stint in the game industry due to some Mac game code I had written as a side project. Now I'm back into databases after writing some web app stuff for a friend. You can get sufficient knowledge to do what you're asked by simply performing your duties, but the ability to do *other* things is what doing personal projects opens up. All that said, if you perform personal projects just to try and get ahead, you probably won't find the motivation to do them. If you do the projects because you enjoy them, then they are their own reward, career changes aside.
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Write your documentation first, then make the code live up to it. You accomplish three things: 1) you know when the project's finished (and so do your customers), 2) you won't leave anything out and 3) you give the customer a chance up front to make sure you understood what (s)he wanted.
tlw1145 wrote:
Write your documentation first, then make the code live up to it. You accomplish three things: 1) you know when the project's finished (and so do your customers), 2) you won't leave anything out and 3) you give the customer a chance up front to make sure you understood what (s)he wanted.
My God! Are you saying that there exist coding projects for which there are functional specifications?!?!?! Please let me come and live in your world. Please...
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After 40 - 60 hours of programming a week I could'nt think of anything worse to do with my spare time.
Josh Gray wrote:
After 40 - 60 hours of programming a week I could'nt think of anything worse to do with my spare time.
I went to live in Italy, in the early eighties (for the obvious reasons - she was bleeding gorgeous), and was completely useless there, because no-one needed English-speaking types, no matter how good they were. So a pal of mine (of hers, actually) offered me a job running his joinery workshop (I only knew 30 words of Italian, and 29 of those were "lads only"). But I took it up, and eventually became a carpenter; and when I returned to the UK, I stayed with it for several years, before returning to the grind. So I build furniture, boats, kitchens, and houses in my spare time -- and I'm bloody proud of the outside-work work I do (since I'm way beyond "handyman" standards). It's the same work ethic, though: Spend most of your time planning and thinking, then rush like mad to finish the highy-detailed "practical" work. So buy yourself a couple of chisels, and learn how to sharpen them properly.
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Josh Gray wrote:
After 40 - 60 hours of programming a week I could'nt think of anything worse to do with my spare time.
I went to live in Italy, in the early eighties (for the obvious reasons - she was bleeding gorgeous), and was completely useless there, because no-one needed English-speaking types, no matter how good they were. So a pal of mine (of hers, actually) offered me a job running his joinery workshop (I only knew 30 words of Italian, and 29 of those were "lads only"). But I took it up, and eventually became a carpenter; and when I returned to the UK, I stayed with it for several years, before returning to the grind. So I build furniture, boats, kitchens, and houses in my spare time -- and I'm bloody proud of the outside-work work I do (since I'm way beyond "handyman" standards). It's the same work ethic, though: Spend most of your time planning and thinking, then rush like mad to finish the highy-detailed "practical" work. So buy yourself a couple of chisels, and learn how to sharpen them properly.
Mark Wallace wrote:
So buy yourself a couple of chisels, and learn how to sharpen them properly.
Funny you should say that, we bought our first house today and it has a timber workshop at the end of the garden which has already been named 'man -land'. My dad was a professional word worker and a leart a lot watching him restore their old house but I've no experiance at all.
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I manage IT folks and I feel these personal (bench) projects are vital. They build bench programming strength, they allow developers to test out new techniques or new technologies, and they reinforce creativity in solutions. All I ask from my team is that their bench projects should have the potential to have a future use within our company (and that their workload does not suffer due to work done on these projects).
thatguymurphy wrote:
All I ask from my team is that their bench projects should have the potential to have a future use within our company (and that their workload does not suffer due to work done on these projects).
So.... their free time is not theirs?
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How many of you do spend time for personal projects?. And how many of you are getting permission from your company to do personal projects ?. I know many of my friends do spend time for their personal projects and publish them in fake names. Do a programmer get sufficient knowledge,if he sticks only with the tasks assigned to him by his employer. I know, most of the programmers in CMM Level 5 companies waste sufficient time in documentation rather than doing coding.
i agree with u ...most cmm level 5 comps waste too much time making things that they would never require.... Tell them to get Six Sigma certified and they'll be in for a shock of their life ... ( for who dont know six sigma...its about simplification and removing unnecessary processes) Getting permission from company to do personal projects is like asking ur boss permission to take a bath, brush ur teeth, etc... y should u ever have anybody's hold on ur free time... company's want to prohibit competition in their domain so they will not let u compete against them in free time ... thats ethical.... but say u r working in web-applications dev for the banking domain, it doesnt make any sense for the company not allowing u to work on your nuclear missile project (okay..bad example :) ) ... except that u dont sleep enough to be able to work properly
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Mark Wallace wrote:
So buy yourself a couple of chisels, and learn how to sharpen them properly.
Funny you should say that, we bought our first house today and it has a timber workshop at the end of the garden which has already been named 'man -land'. My dad was a professional word worker and a leart a lot watching him restore their old house but I've no experiance at all.
Josh Gray wrote:
Funny you should say that, we bought our first house today and it has a timber workshop at the end of the garden which has already been named 'man -land'.
Lucky bugger. I'm just at the point of building a workstation/bookshelving/everything-storage for the front room of my new place, and I've had to convert a bedroom into a workshop.
Josh Gray wrote:
My dad was a professional word worker and a leart a lot watching him restore their old house but I've no experiance at all.
I loved doing that kind of work, and you get to work with fun people. I'd still be doing it today, if the money weren't such crap.
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thatguymurphy wrote:
All I ask from my team is that their bench projects should have the potential to have a future use within our company (and that their workload does not suffer due to work done on these projects).
So.... their free time is not theirs?
Super Lloyd, I think we're not seeing eye-to-eye on this subject. What is your definition of free time? I'm talking about projects done while at work and that's why I added the bit about workload. Do whatever you want when you’re not getting paid by the company. But whey you're at work and working on a bench project I ask that it loosely have a future use for the company.
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Super Lloyd, I think we're not seeing eye-to-eye on this subject. What is your definition of free time? I'm talking about projects done while at work and that's why I added the bit about workload. Do whatever you want when you’re not getting paid by the company. But whey you're at work and working on a bench project I ask that it loosely have a future use for the company.
Well I was just continuing in the spirit of the original post: personal project you do at home! ;P
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Well I was just continuing in the spirit of the original post: personal project you do at home! ;P
Ha-ha. Well... Jith didn't exactly say personal = home. He did, however suggest that he needed permission from his company. And, Jith, if you're asking the company for permission to work on projects at home, you need to re-evaluate your relationship with your employer.
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How many of you do spend time for personal projects?. And how many of you are getting permission from your company to do personal projects ?. I know many of my friends do spend time for their personal projects and publish them in fake names. Do a programmer get sufficient knowledge,if he sticks only with the tasks assigned to him by his employer. I know, most of the programmers in CMM Level 5 companies waste sufficient time in documentation rather than doing coding.
I have a personal project I've been working on for about a year, A Crossword Puzzle solver. It's pretty simple but it has 110,000 word dictionary and another 2500 words and phrases gleaned from real puzzles. I'd like to market it as a product, but don't know how & and I don't see a very wide market, but it was fun working on it. js