A bit offtopic, but the author seems to assume you are a straight coder guy. This was probably not his intention though. Why not replace "girlfriend" by something more neutral, like "your better half"? Being inclusive doesn't cost much, really.
The language we use, especially the language we use casually, defines how we appear. To those outside the predominantly straight white male clique of programming, repeated exposure to these casual assumptions of stereotype pile up and create a sense that those not fitting the stereotype are unwelcome. Imagine if, every single day you had to drive around the same pothole in the road into coming traffic: eventually, you'd find a different route.
And BTW, "girlfriend" could apply to gay coder chick.
The author is just giving examples of people you can talk to, if it just said 'Call your girlfriend' that would be different.
Another pro is we don't have a big gap in salaries being more or less well paid (in Germany).
The drawbacks are that you are quite limited in scope, you don't learn something new outside of your programming domain. The mindsets are pretty similar: sometimes I think my wife is too logical, and we have a similar way of thinking after many years in the profession, which can be a bit boring.
I'd say in general it helps the relationship, but it does not come without pitfalls.
Dating someone in the same field gives greater likelihood of finding that, but there's other ways to do it too. People who went to similar schools, people in related fields, people who hang out at similar social events...
Your work is one field where you can find overlap, but there's lots of others. My fiancé works in a completely different field, but we have similar preferences in how we spend our spare time. I'd have never met her if I restricted myself to programmers (she's in conservation and events; an odd mix to say the least).
Rationally I would never pick somebody from the same field as me.
I wonder what that fifth of my brain would have been thinking about for the past 10 years, if not programming. Maybe it would have been dancing, or painting, or soccer. Instead of context switching into thinking like a computer, it'd be how to move my body around or how to meld colors together. I feel like that would lead to a much more fulfilling life.
I used to program for fun in middle school. It was probably halfway through high school when I stopped programming for fun. It was always that little nagging voice in the back of my head: Play it safe. Programming is an in-demand field! You're good at it! Look at all of that awesome shit you made.
At this point, the only "hobby" I have is programming. I don't even know what else I like anymore.
Well, that's on you, but the good news is that you can change that as soon as you want. Why not start today?
I suppose cooking might have actually been the best avenue. I find that the more i cook the more i draw parallels. It's quite associative and borderline object-oriented. I watch cooking shows where a dish is mentioned and the chef immediately starts building a menu in his head. It reminds me of when someone asks a programmer to design a blog/website/etc.
No matter how much someone directs you on how to program something, you always have that little bit of wiggle room to add your own creativity to it.
Programming is like art. The coding is the medium. The thoughts and solutions, when it all works together, just feels right.
My job when it goes into stuff other than programming, I find myself coding at night to feel that structure, control, creativity and freedom all rolled into one.
Most other fields don't offer that.
If not programming, that 20% of your brain would have been thinking about whatever else it is you did for a job.
By default, this "computer brain" of mine is carried with me when I leave work. I have to make a concentrated effort to context switch back into "real life" mode (similarly how I have to context switch into "computer" mode). I think that's why so many of the good programmers are a little weird and introverted, because they don't bother to context switch back.
Art is art!
This hit me hard. Feels like the years have just slipped on by since I graduated university.
Not particularly sure how to stop it though...maybe a few more years and I can just take a few months off and travel or something?
I would suggest to find a hobby that involves other people.
Two hours if sweating put your mind in a very different state.
Music is good as well. Anything that starts up other brain areas than "watching" and "reading".
If it can make you feel better, I don't think that's related to development as much as "getting a job and growing up". Most people feel the same, which is why the "school reunion" trope is a staple of modern cinematography.
How about, say, a month from now, take 3 weeks off to go somewhere you haven't been, or go be with your family. Or maybe next week, take Monday off, or maybe Thursday and Friday and just have a nice quiet weekend away from the computer. You don't need to be able to take a bunch of months off in order to get some quality down time in. Don't let great be the enemy of good. Sure it may be great to take a few months off at a time, but it's good to take a couple days or weeks off here and there.
I strongly disagree with this one, although I'm not sure if my reasoning is broadly or only personally applicable. The last thing I want to do at the end of a long day of work is recap what I did. Even in the best-case scenario of a day full of victories, it's just exhausting to try to relive all of them with the added burden of explaining the decade-plus knowledge base you'd need to understand why Problem X was so hard to solve. I'm much happier with a base of other interests to talk about after work with a non-programmer instead.
That being said, I also find that some problems are strictly-technical in nature, and can't really be distilled to anything informative (e.g. Ionic's livereload dev server randomly serves up an old build rather than the most recent build due to weird interactions with gulp watch). In those cases, sometimes it's okay to just say something like "our tools were being frustrating."
The goal, at least with my fiancée, is to make an effort to communicate with her how my day went, because on a deeper level what I'm communicating is that I want to share my life with her, and that we're a team.
There's a lot of implicit emotional elements to human communication, and sometimes to communicate one thing implicitly, you have to work really hard to communicate something seemingly-unrelated explicitly.
I think it's hard for someone else to actually understand the problem when you two are not in the same knowledge framework. Cause then she/he will be perpetually asking the why and how question and being not satisfied.
edited.
The technical details and why it was hard to solve aren't the parts that matter.
I believe that. My girlfriend really pushes me occasionally about my day, and I think it's because she knows that talking about her day really helps her. I'm happy to listen for her, but I've just come to the conclusion that trying to recap things I've done makes me more stressed out, and the fifteen seconds of "no, I really don't want to talk about it" is worth it.
And for what it's worth, having read back over that, I am not in a high-pressure job. I consult about thirty hours a week or so.
Music, sports, reality tv, literature, friends, etc. Basically anything else.
One thing specific to programmers is the ability to whip up a little program to help people. Someone spends an hour every day retyping lower-case data in uppercase? Take ten seconds and write them a program. Someone complains how they always forget to shut down their computer and waste electricity? Write them a widget to shut it down at 1am each night.
When I take a bit of time to write programs for people I care about, people are usually very grateful and vastly overestimate the difficulty of whatever I just did. As always, relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1425/
Jobs that have been around a lot longer, like construction or accounting, allow you to just leave your work when you go home.
In that way I think developers face a unique challenge. We all know how prevalent burn out is in the industry, it's tough making sure relationships don't burn out as well.
Thanks for the feedback!
And this is problem with our industry. I have friends that are mechanical or electrical engineers, very good ones, and they do not spend their non-working hours doing engineering. If their work requires them to learn something new, their employers actually give them the time and money to learn that skill, rather than just expecting them to learn it in their spare time.
When I first came into software 16 years ago, I did do a lot of "programming for fun" in my off hours, but I also came into the industry with no formal education in software engineering. Once I got out of the start-up world about 10 years ago, I discovered that my employers would allow me keep up with industry trends on company time, and while I still may hack a bit on things outside of work if something interesting intrigues me, I generally avoid doing any programming in my off hours and instead investment my time in other things.
Lol no. If I'm coding it's not free time, and if I'm coding to learn it's professional development, not recreation. "Coding is a lifestyle" is such a scam.
I also suspect many academic professions fall into this trap as well: mathematician, physicist, etc.
As a developer myself, I don't think this particular aspect is unique, instead I think it's a matter of perspective and what we value in life.
For example, many individuals if they see someone reading a phone as they're walking may look unfavourably upon them thinking something like "people glued to their phones, bleargh". However, if the same individual was walking reading a paper book instead, many would simply shrug it off as "that person is a studious individual / bookworm".
I had a really good friend at work for a while but it always had this flirty undercurrent. We both had SOs, but enjoyed the "office wife/husband" thing (my real wife actually knew about it and was not jealous). Anyway, the flirtationship thing makes you as vulnerable to criticism as an actual relationship, so the occasional sarcastic tirade or bad mood day really hurts. Long story short, we're not only no-longer-friends (this happen, I've worked at the same place for so long some friendships are cyclical); we can't talk to each other or work in the same open plan office. It's a small wonder no one's been fired. Ultimately the drama/good feeling ratio doesn't work out.
I work in a small shop and was hired as the third developer, about 4 months after developer number two. Of course, Number 2 and I became friends pretty quickly and we would hang out outside of work on occasion. That is, until one day when some totally insignificant disagreement resulted in threats of physical violence against me. Needless to say, I didn't enjoy that, we never hung out again. I brought the comment up with management (the company owner) and as far as I can tell nothing came of it.
Now, as our company and development staff has grown the owner has put this same guy in a managerial role that I have to answer to, and because of our history, it's becoming more difficult to stay productive in our interactions.
In other words, friends in the workplace can be a good thing, but if it backfires, and especially if you're both candidates for advancement in the same department, the repercussions could have you polishing your resume.
I'm a software engineer, and a hetero male. Why would I want to flirt with other men?
I frequently wish I had gone into another career (probably medical) so I could try out this flirting with coworkers thing I keep hearing about.
I'd suggest the fashion, tourism or entertainment industries.
Is this really true for everyone? I sacrificed my relationship because I prioritize my projects and I've never been happier. I can't imagine getting into another since it would mean compromises I'm not willing to make.
Good relationships are a key part of being happy.
Bad relationships...not so much
This had me laughing: (No, changing your Vim colorscheme doesn’t count as a “different experience.”)
I see beauty in math and algorithms. I'm sick of people, who just see such things only in dollar terms.
However, I think there is a greater cultural attack on technological professionals. I feel like we are devalued as some sort of machine that cranks out code. Many play into this as well. I don't think it is healthy.
This statement is more accurate if you remove the comma. What you wrote makes a blanket claim about all people (which is highly unlikely to be true for even a majority). Without the comma, it's a useful heuristic for what kinds of people you should avoid so that you can have a more fulfilling circle of friends.
There is nothing wrong with seeing beauty in math and algorithms, because it's certainly there. But taken too far, it can become self-validating by judging other people as lacking value, and refusing to see beauty in other people with different interests.
This might be part of what you view as an attack on technological professionals, where we're stereotyped as people with only an interest in computers/math and have no interest in actual people.
Try seeking out people who also see beauty in maths and algorithms and you might have a better experience. Finding people who have similar values to you goes a long way in having good relationships (as long as you don't entirely limit yourself to like-minded people).
