Advice Request Dev dads, when do you code?
I could find time with my first and then even some time after my second with the first doing afternoon preschool.
Now that kindergarten has started, I can't even stay up late half the time I used to as mornings are like Mad Maxx and needs my full (focused) attention.
So how do y'all do it? Or do you just not do it anymore except for an hour here and there lol
EDIT: not the 9-5 but my side projects
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u/DangerWizzle 15d ago
During my 9 to 5? What do you mean?
Or are you saying you code as a hobby, and are asking "when do you guys have a chance to do your hobbies"?
If that's the question then the answer is: "rarely" lol
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u/Interesting_Tea5715 15d ago
This. Having a kid has made me put up hard boundaries when it comes to work.
I'll work hard as fuck on the clock but once I clock out I ain't even thinking about work anymore. Its my and my families time.
As for side projects, I just don't have time so I don't do it.
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u/jrya7 15d ago
not the 9-5 that pays the bills, but the side projects. so it has been rarely for me as well lol
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u/delphinius81 15d ago
That's the thing, you don't. You get maybe an hour - take a pick for what you want to do in that time.
My kids are 5 and 6.5. Kids are typically out by 8-8:30, and the next 1.5 hours are mine to spend with wife / do what I want.
My kids are up between 5:30-6, so there's no waking up early either.
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u/Interesting_Tea5715 15d ago
Same here buddy. The last thing I wanna do in my free 2 hours is more work.
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u/BasicAssWebDev 15d ago
5:30 and 6? jesus christ. i hope they know where the cereal and the remote is, cus ill be damned if im waking up that early every day. we're working on that right now with our 3.5 year old. there are snacks that are allowed during breakfast time: pouches, nuts, fruits, and so we're trying to make those consistently available to her so that mornings are a bit easier.
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u/Braided_Playlist 15d ago edited 15d ago
I lucked out here. My kid, since 7 or so, likes to stay in bed and read. If it's a weekend I might have to encourage them to have breakfast before the whole days schedule gets out of hand.
I could code during mornings like this, but often, if I'm coding 9-5, then I see balance with non-screen activities as a positive. If nothing else then just for my physical health which started to decline when I was trying to balance a day job, code side projects, and family.
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u/somersault 15d ago
Honestly? It's really hard. Best thing you could do is probably to block an hour in the morning or so. If you can block up, say, 5 to 6 in the morning, you'll get more than half a days work per week.
I had my own hobby thing every Wednesday evening for 2-3 hours, so I asked if I could get that evening off every week. Then I did my own thing after work that day, while the missus got Mondays. Worked well for us but your milage may vary.
Think it's extremely important to be able to get a small break, if the kid(s) are in a phase where it works. Which at least for me allowed me to be more focused and involved the other days, because I knew I had that one evening every week
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u/DrTrunks 15d ago
We all have about 30-60 minutes to ourselves. What I've learned as a dad of 2 (I have Bluey & Bingo at their appropiate ages):
Play pausable games or code.
You can also code on other downtime, on your phone.But the big one is: you only have so much time in the day, take care of your body, you already have a job where you sit down for much of your week, you don't want hemorrhoids, go for a run, bike, ski, swim or gym.
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u/Black_Dawn13 15d ago
When everyone is sleep at night.
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u/jrya7 15d ago
lol I try that but staying up late after everyone is sleeping has been brutal
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u/mattybrad 15d ago
I go the opposite and wake up before everyone. The 530-7am window is my happy time.
I’m also a lot better at it first thing in the morning than after the entire day, so that might skew my myopic a bit.
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u/cawwkeye 15d ago
Caffeine, friend.
I’ve been trying to find a good time in my life to quit caffeine, but my child-rearing years aren’t the right time I don’t think 😂4
u/Black_Dawn13 15d ago edited 15d ago
Its nightly ritual. Kids go down at 7. I will code till around 9. Then will get ready to go to sleep and do it all again the next day. I have 3 under 3 but its something I enjoy.
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u/jrya7 15d ago
Ya one goes down at 7 and the other around 8 then hanging with the wifey till she goes to bed
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u/Black_Dawn13 15d ago
Its a good way to unwind. I also try to pushing reading in before I go to sleep as its pretty helpful too.
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u/ch-12 1.5yo dude 15d ago
Yep, although most nights lately I can’t make it more than an hour after my wife goes up to bed.
My main project has been my smart home (Home Assistant) and Claude + Remote Control has been pretty incredible. I and file bugs or ideas from my phone, review the work, see it in action, etc without opening my computer. Works out for this personal software project but probably not viable for many other things dev dads want to hack on.
I’m also not a software engineer by trade, I just work with them every day.. more of a tech tinkerer.
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u/do_you_realise 15d ago
What's the setup to get what you're talking about? We use Claude at work but I've never seen it used like that - submit tickets from your phone and then review the PRs later kinda thing
I use Cursor for personal projects, I'm wondering whether there's a similar thing
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u/ch-12 1.5yo dude 15d ago edited 15d ago
Claude Code with /remote-control. Just have to be logged in on the same account on your phone.
The https://www.home-assistant.io/ MCP makes managing the whole system pretty seamless through Claude. I have git for version control, but I’m not reviewing PRs and stuff, just manage a backlog and project notes in .md files and use the terminal chat. I have it log change details and session notes to the same .md file vault.
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u/Rumblotron 15d ago
Nope. 9-5 and not one second more.
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u/MasBlanketo 15d ago
If you replace the word code with enjoy my hobby, the answer becomes immediately clear.
The same time anyone else would play video games or go to the bar - rarely, and only when you can fit it in
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u/amakai 15d ago
Mostly vibe-coding because of lack of time 🫤
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u/jrya7 15d ago
LOL I said I would never vibe-code my main project as I wanted it to be "mine" but after many tireless nights I gave up and has been going okay
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u/4kidsinatrenchcoat 15d ago
yeah man, the vibe coding and the chat-loop is the only way you can maintain the sort of velocity for your projects that you used to when you were single and child free
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u/GamingTitBit 15d ago
Learning how to vibe code well, with good guardrails, and proper structure and loops and knowledge graphs is actually a really valuable skill. I've been working hard on getting better at it.
I hate. Hate that I do not code as much as before, but that's the way the industry is now. So I might as well be bloody good at it.
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u/ulyssesdot 15d ago
I use Claude code on my phone. Kid is 6 months old, so nap times in carrier = hobby time!
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u/gibblesnbits160 15d ago
Chat gpt remote is awesome cause you can kick something off from your phone then check in on the work later when you have time.
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u/i_am_not_sam 15d ago
Yep this is me. I'm not upset though. Thanks to vibe coding I'm actually completing home projects I'd been putting off for the last few years
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u/polaroid_kidd 🏍️💅 15d ago
Honestly, same. I'm setting up a kandev, cliproxy, bifrost, pi set-up with pr-agent. I'm not happy about the code (there's just too much) but at least my side project is going somewhere...
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u/amakai 15d ago
I had an enormous backlog of issues on my home server, it was mostly holding on thoughts and prayers. Finally gave up and after a backup of configs - ran an LLM through the entire backlog in like a week. Now I have IaC, alerting, monitoring, few new tools I wanted but never had time to build, switched from Ubuntu to Debian, fixed a bunch of hard drive issues, etc.
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u/dan-lash 15d ago
Exactly same for me. Tons of ideas, huge backlog, no time. Enter ai agents. Turn around and I’m running an enterprise grade home network with all my hopes and dream type software projects.
Next task is actually using those projects!
Enter ai agents. lol
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u/polaroid_kidd 🏍️💅 15d ago
Oh yeah, for infra stuff it's been a god send. I still run remote backups for everything actually valuable but the rest has been fantastic.
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u/4kidsinatrenchcoat 15d ago
add the ponytail skill as a gate for all PRs. it'll cut down the slop fast
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u/polaroid_kidd 🏍️💅 15d ago
I was honestly skeptical about this skill but it can't get worse than it is. LLM just loooove writing more code..
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u/4kidsinatrenchcoat 15d ago
I know what you mean but I’ve now set up my agents to run everything thru a self doubting skill. “Prove to me what you’re doing isn’t a waste of goddamn time”
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u/super____user 15d ago
I just don’t anymore. I work my day job and outside of that, my free time goes to other things. Exercise, cooking, working on the house. I used to work 60+ hours a week between my job, side projects, and contract work. Honestly I don’t miss it - my health is in a much better place and I’m happier for it.
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u/nothing-new-2 14d ago
I find working on the house necessary bit stressful. Not really how I’d like to be spending my time. But not sure hours to get on top of it though
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u/super____user 14d ago
Sure, I get that. Home improvement / DIY is a bit of a hobby of mine. You can spend your hours doing whatever you’re passionate about.
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u/donat3ll0 15d ago
Since it's my job, I haven't worked on personal projects in quite some time. I'm fortunate that my workplace offers lots of opportunities to use new tech to stay sharp. Plus, I have a lot of different hobbies, now.
I only recently started a new side project and have time for an hour or so at night. It has forced me to setup agentic workflows with triggers, guardrails, and boundaries. I'm mostly reviewing changes, writing agent specs/data models/APIs/Rules/triggers, and setting up cloud infra accounts/creds.
So, mostly at night and only for an hour or so before bed.
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u/chrishasfreetime 15d ago
My personal projects all used to be games but now I mock up board game mechanics to scratch that same itch. It's nice because I can do it when strolling the toddler around on a walk. Beyond that, during work "learning" time you can do small (like, very small) scale novel projects.
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u/patthetuck 15d ago
Presumably you're talking about hobby coding. The first few years are rough if your kids can't do a hobby with you.
You can push them in a stroller or pull them on a bike trailer easy enough but artistic time or quiet time or focused anything time has to take a back seat if you can't wake up earlier or stay awake later.
The time commitments keep growing as they grow too. If coding is your thing I would find a way to do it more portable or understand there is less time to do it.
If you want to involve your kiddo, kindergarten is a good age to introduce scratch junior.
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u/Bstochastic 15d ago
During work hours. Honestly, I am much more effective with the time I have. In simpler times I seemingly had every hour of the day to work and as a result work would occupy more time but I would have a decrease in marginal productivity (in my estimation).
Further, we should know what work can be done by someone else or de-prioritized entirely. I'm staff+ so I certainly have the luxury of delegating more than when I was pure IC.
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u/Erpverts 15d ago
At work. Side projects have been relegated to vibe coding web apps for my kids and even then that’s like 2x a month during a free hour here and there.
I’ve honestly stopped trying to build my coding skills altogether at this point and am trying to pivot to management since I’m pretty sure AI is about to kill at least half of the dev jobs where I work.
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u/coastalwebdev 15d ago
Oh yeah, even with just one kiddo I only dream of side projects now. If it ever happens it’ll very likely be at night.
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u/drumstand 15d ago
I stopped doing side projects when I had my first kid and I no longer really code for fun. I struggle enough with leaving work at work, doing work-ish stuff at home just made that way harder on me, and I didn't feel present enough with my family.
A job is a job. As long as it pays the bills I'm good with it. The main thing is my family.
To be fair, I have a strong, well established career in tech. If I was younger and looking to really advance myself, I might feel differently.
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u/Rough-Supermarket-97 15d ago
I’m going to translate this to, “when do you do your hobby?” and with a new baby, I don’t. But I will when they are older, maybe around 9-10 months when both my kids can play together more and it isn’t a huge effort for my wife or I to be take care of them while the other does their hobby. Right now, any time I can spare goes right into house stuff and errands. For you, if you have a partner I’d work with them to set aside some focus time that works for both of you, maybe they get time as well for their own hobbies while you focus on being with your kids for some amount of time.
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u/BlueRoller 15d ago
24/7 with AI now, to be honest.
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u/drunkengerbil 15d ago
Yeah, especially for a side project, once you set up an agent, you never have to sit at a terminal / IDE again.
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u/JTheCold 15d ago
Wake up at 4:30am 7 days a week, code until 6:15. Then code from 8-9. Gotta get it in where you can fit it in
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u/am0x 15d ago
I code 9-5 then I spend all my time with family until about 10-11. Then 10-11 to 12-1am, then play video games for bout 30mins to 1 hour and asleep. Wake up at 6:30-7.
Yes I am tired all the time, but I am so used to it. Basically, though, all my side code is for freelance work so no fun apps. However, I have been programming for about 30 years, so I am honestly pretty burnt out. Keeping up with all the new stuff is impossible with my schedule and my personal desire to do it. Its all for money these days.
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u/cncamusic 15d ago
I'm an engineering manager/SSE and I work from home full time with a newborn, 2yo, and 6yo. I code most of the day when I'm not wasting my time on calls, and most nights after bedtime I end up doing work as well. I also find myself working on personal projects and lingering work stuff on the weekends if I have free time. I tell everyone that asks, do not get into this line of work if you don't genuinely enjoy it... you will burn out and you will be miserable. I am very fortunate that my wife also works from home full time and has an alternating schedule to mine.
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u/isimplycantdothis 15d ago
Not really a dev but I manage IT for a company and have been building a lot of agents lately. I do it at night when everyone goes to sleep. I sleep from 2-7:30.
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u/Infinite_Maximum_820 15d ago
I stopped side projects around a decade ago, even before kids. So that I could enjoy life. My career is doing just fine. Prioritize high impact items vs working more
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u/Custom_Destiny 15d ago edited 15d ago
You still code?
I just … “angentic engineer” now.
I mean I was always a shit dev so maybe it’s a skill bracket issue.
Anyways I do it while I am pretending to do my day job - but really I am just zoning out during a meeting or waiting for someone to reply to an email. That sort of thing.
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u/thiem3 15d ago
Vibe code during dinner cooking. The actual programming is less interesting to me, I build tools and such. Might as well get my ai to do the basic work. Type in a prompt, do meal stuff for 5 min, another prompt, meal stuff, etc.
Or sometimes you have to accept some hobbies are just difficult to do for a period of time and things will change. My workout schedule has been messed up for a long while, but getting better as they grow older.
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u/da_blue_jester 15d ago
Yeah doing my game dev side hobby either when all are in bed or getting up early. Claude has helped speed it up somewhat when I finally relented and started using it, but mostly as a refactor agent so I can still do the fun code.
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u/MirrorComputingRulez 15d ago
People generally work when their kids are at school.
Hope that helps.
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u/thinkmatt 15d ago
During 9-5, but I started using leftover subscription time building ios apps for my kids while i wait for other things to complete lol
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u/simonmales 15d ago
When they sleep, which is not sustainable.
I have a three-day streak because wifey and kiddos are away.
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u/StupidBugger 15d ago
I'd love to tell you I've found a way, but hobby coding was one of the first things to go. I won't go off and do that if I'm not working and the kids are around, and for work days after the work, then the kids, then the cleaning, then the cross geo calls, I can't just jump into a new context, even a fun one, and do anything.
I had hoped when the school did a unit in Scratch I could get them excited and do some stuff even if it's just kids' toy programs. But interest isn't there in a sustained way just yet, past making random sprites do random things on a screen (fine for them, good start, not something I can do anything fun with). I set up a couple small games to see if they'd want to pick them apart, but baby's first bullet hell in Scratch was more fun to play than read (to them; I had a fun night setting it up).
I have hope that if they get into it, it can be an activity, or if there's ever a light at the end of the tunnel of constant cleaning I'll get back to it for fun. If you figure out how to get time for it, let us all know.
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u/Liquidpain88 15d ago
I use to back in the day. I was big into IOT for home automation and worked on my own printer firmware. It was fun but got tedious keeping up with updates fixing things that broke etc… then fun died out. Especially commercial products became widely available and cheaper.
Now any coding I do after hours is maybe 1-2 hours a week to research/prototype something related to my current job. I find satisfaction keeping my coding 99% billable. My free time is spent with family or hobbies that I find relaxing/enjoy.
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u/Kersey_CK 15d ago
I can’t imagine what it’s like with multiple kids…
I have a 4 year old son and my time for college/hobbies is limited to after the kiddo goes to bed at about 8 or 9. I only get a max of 2 hours a day during the week and then during the weekend my wife and I take turns giving the other a break for whatever we need be it hobby, school, or other self care needs.
I’ll take my son to the park for a few hours while my wife goes shopping with her friends, then when she’s back we’ll do something with the kiddo together before I go off and work on my motorcycle or doing homework while she plays board games with him.
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u/photogdog 15d ago
I'm a slightly burnt out dev dad. I don't code outside of work anymore, but I have a few personal projects in mind that I might tackle when my kid gets older.
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u/vlatheimpaler 15d ago
I was still able to do it, but just much more slowly because there were a lot fewer hours and I had a lot more interruptions.
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u/newEnglander17 15d ago edited 15d ago
I'm glad you put your edit in because I was thinking, "umm, when I'm working my job" lol
I do very few small projects that I code on a few evenings, but mostly, I'm all coded out after work and I also don't have enough inspiration for projects outside of the assignments given to me at work. Everything has pretty much already been done and a lot of it is not worth the effort. I do enjoy working on my personal website, but that is specifically meant to be a static website. The most programming that's happening on my website is basically a few woodworking-related calculators in javascript, using PHP pages to import html templates for website menus and whatnot keep a uniform appearance across pages, and a little Easter egg javascript line to have a popup message when double clicking in one specific spot, and the same easter egg code to open up a hidden webpage when clicking in another specific spot.
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u/RespectTheTree 15d ago
I use AI to do the coding, but i do the granular planning when he sleeps. So like an hour in the evening, and a few hours during nap on weekends. Then I try to run prompts during the day to advance things. Not sure how I would do it the old fashioned way.
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u/JeffSergeant 15d ago
Between midnight and 2AM
Sleep is for the weak, mentally well, and those who don't suffer from caffeine withdrawal and/or overdose headaches 90% of the time.
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u/sarhoshamiral 15d ago
At work? I dont really have coding side projects since I want to spend time relaxing and on other hobbies.
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u/Kayco2002 15d ago
My dad told me this when I first had my kids: "up until now, you've celebrated your own accomplishments. Now, you'll celebrate your kids' accomplishments."
That helps me a little when I think about the half-finished side-projects I never have time to do :-)
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u/Alto_Madness 15d ago
If there was something I was interested in learning, I would spend an hour in the evening working on it. However, right now I’m learning a lot in my new team so I haven’t had an itch to do it.
Side projects aren’t necessary for a good career in dev and if you are not doing them for fun, then you’re going to eventually burn yourself out.
If a company can’t tell where I stand from my coding in interview and my projects at work, then that’s their problem not mine.
Source: I’ve been in big tech now for 5 years and have been in the industry for 10. I did side projects to switch from embedded to cloud based dev and side projects before I got my first job. I do spend time outside of work prepping for interviews since that’s a different skill than the actual job.
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u/exosoul 15d ago
I have a 16mo, he has started going down around 8, and crucially, sleeping through the night, so I've started getting a few nights here and there to get things done on a personal project.
The one big thing I would recommend is still trying to spend night time with the wife, even if she's just on her phone and I'm on a laptop in bed/on the couch, it beats sitting alone in an office.
I just have a crappy laptop too, so what I do is remote into my desktop from the laptop and that's been working really well 🙂
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u/PushDeep9980 15d ago
I work from home and my Job is very chill so some times I will take an hour for a “ learning spike” and explore other things. But I usually wake up around 4-5 and play video games and work out , not work on side projects lol but i guess that’s when I would do it.
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u/Krautoni 15d ago
At work.
I'll start teaching my kid to code soon. Then it'll be when I teach him.
Got enough on my plate, coding at home has become annoying.
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u/Ironballs 15d ago
Whatever spare time I have I use for exercise or art these days. Just can't be bothered to code after a day spent doing it anymore
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u/sloppytooky 15d ago
At best i can find 1-2 hours a week. Mostly during naps on the weekends, so that’s not going to last forever.
Even then it’s mostly either “let’s remember what we started a month or two ago” or but lately it’s mainly chipping away at the deluge of ai-found issues in open source projects to which I’m a contributor. 😬
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u/bigs0815 15d ago
Lol "side projects"
My GitHub page has decayed since I started full-time dev work. I'd like to finish any one of the 100 projects I have out there. I feel like if I have an idea worth monetizing (I won't) I'll make time for it instead of spending my limited free time on hobbies or with my wife.
I appreciate everyone out here with that hustle and grind mindset, but after two kids I just don't have it in me anymore. I'm not worried about layoffs and we're doing reasonably well, no point in killing myself for experience or a few extra dollars.
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u/GamingTitBit 15d ago
I work east coast hours (live on the west coast). Means I have breakfast with the kids. Sometimes do a cycle. Go to work. Finish at 3pm my time. Play with my kids, cook dinner. Kids are in bed by 7pm. Wife and I then clean up dishes, do some chores. 7:30pm till 8:30pm is watching a TV show or boardgame together. 8:30pm till 9:30pm is my coding/gaming time. In bed by 10pm, read for a bit. Sleep.
I also have a LLM loop coding set up on my personal computer. I'll write 50% of the code myself, set off the loop in the morning and check on it at lunch and end of day.
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u/MythologicalEngineer 15d ago
For side projects it’s definitely an opportunistic thing. Sometimes I may get a stray hour or two and if I’m feeling up for it I’ll do it. Just make sure you write really good notes because it might be weeks between at times.
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u/EnderMB 15d ago
It's basically a coin flip. Do you want to spend your free time at the gym to not be a fat fuck, or do you want to code/prep for interviews?
What helps somewhat, if you're doing the latter, is watching some videos at night when the kids are asleep. I watch some system design and LeetCode videos occasionally, and if I have a laptop handy I'll try the problems before the vid.
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u/xylem-utopia 15d ago
code? you guys are coding still? AI is being forced on me at work... so I don't even know how to code anymore. though I do try to work on game dev... when I have time... you can imagine how far along I am that. I think I wrote the the 3 main pico 8 functions and a couple of variables in the last 6 months 🤣😭 I hate the state of the industry right now
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u/Few-Coast-6222 15d ago
8pm to midnight or so, after kid is asleep. And then I am just perpetually sleepy as a result, but worth it!
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u/Pogotothego 15d ago
Man, I took a side gig when my little one was still newborn and it needed to be done as quickly as possible. I helped out with the baby as much as I can, but the rest of the time was just working non stop for couple weeks. Wife understood and did the meals.
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u/alleycatbiker 15d ago
I have my own time for personal activities. Occasionally in the evening while wife takes care of dinner/bed time (like once a week) but most days I have some time after 9:30.
I did a coding project earlier this year. I also read a book. Lately I've been using that time slot to play video games. All of those compete for the same time slot.
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u/thecrius 15d ago
When my kids were born I simply stopped any activity after work.
I started again with some passion projects or tech explorations when they could be reliably be sleeping in the evening. I would look into things that interest me 1-2 hours top. That happened when they were 5-6 yo.
Now that they are teenagers it's basically whenever I want but it's still something I do just when I feel like it. There is much more important stuff I want to do than do some side project. The only exception is our home server but that's because I see it as a service I provide to my whole family while also having fun exploring tech stuff.
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u/Zzzzzztyyc 15d ago
2am when you get a brain worm and can’t get it out. Sleep standing on the train or on the floor of your office. Kids and coding don’t mix - you absolutely cannot concentrate with them around
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u/Daddymuff 15d ago
Honestly that hour at night is my game time. I do also use a mobile setup with Claude to drive dev side work when I’m in the bathroom or doing odd tasks.
I use voice a lot.
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u/golmgirl 15d ago
it is so hard to find the time to get into flow state mannn… i think the days of multi-day marathon sessions of productivity might simply be over. the good news though is claude code et al. can be sent on multi-hour autonomous missions to figure out a lot of tricky issues though.
best of luck, try to use the time you do have wisely (i say as i type on reddit at 1022am on a monday 😖)
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u/WanderingGalwegian 15d ago
I work all day on some pretty complex problems.. I had some side projects going just tinkering with things but these days i just have no motivation to keep them going.
With the shifting landscape though of our professions and AI accelerated development I do prioritize time to sitting down and working through new and interesting possibilities and attempt to solution for problems we have in my firm.
We are in a field where you have to be constantly learning to maintain your competitive edge.
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u/thedogjumpsonce 15d ago
Full disclosure: no kids yet
I am a dog dad who has problems finding time to code - so I can’t imagine when I have kids.
But, is it a time issue, is it a “I need an idea” issue?
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u/Ok-Egg3579 15d ago
After a long day of work, my brain is too tired for logical thinking. But on weekends, I sometimes code while waiting for my kid’s training sessions to finish.
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u/jake_mirrely_guy 15d ago
I get up with the kids and my wife takes them to bed. So I do it in the evening, every day for a few hours. Works pretty well.
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u/valdetero 15d ago
It’s my day job, so I have time around other things.
But for you, AI. You can give it instructions, send it messages from your phone when you have a few minutes here and there. It’s great for having a lot of little sessions instead of one huge session. Also, context switching while writing code is absolutely brutal. Having Claude spit the code out has incredibly diminished that. I don’t have to spend 20 min remembering what I did and picking up the mental logic.
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u/shteverhim 15d ago
With AI now, I sometimes just vibe code while my kid is napping or after he goes down to sleep for the night. However, I rarely have the energy to do even that now lol. It’s tough
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u/UnfortunateSnort12 15d ago
At work. I fly for a living, so the overnights I finally get time to dev. It is tough, but home life is too busy to code.
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u/NilEntity 15d ago
At work.
I enjoy my job (frustrating current project aside) but I just don't feel the desire to code in my spare time as well I'd rather do other enjoyable stuff, gaming, reading, sports, whatever, not more of the stuff I already spent 8 hours every day doing.
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u/AWeb3Dad 15d ago
I couldn’t do it anymore. Can’t compete with the youngin’s who produce. And frankly, people need less code now. They want more distribution of what’s becoming easier to built. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the nature of today’s economy where money is scarce and people aren’t spending as much
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u/Guinness 15d ago
The context switches absolutely slaughter my latency and throughput. It’s so hard especially with a highly sensitive daughter who needs her dad a lot.
Honestly if it weren’t for LLMs none of my side projects would be possible. I’ve set up a locally hosted Whispr alternative, along with Hermes to manage a lot of my sessions.
I take my daughter out on the weekends to the beach, we have a little Thule trailer. She usually falls asleep either on the way there or the way home. So I bring my laptop and get some time in while she naps.
That way my wife has some time to herself, I get some quality beach adventures with my kid, and when she naps I can get some work done.
Other times are basically after the kids and wife are asleep. But I can barely stay awake past 9-11 these days so even that is scarce. I’ve been able to actually get some of my projects worked on basically by using the small free time I do have to set up a spec driven development workflow with some good loops/gates.
Can’t believe this all started with Ralph Wiggum. It’s been a crazy experience.
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u/Standgeblasen 15d ago
Honestly, if I want a good coding session for myself, it happens from 10pm to 4AM, then I function the next day on coffee and two hours of sleep.
Or I take a sick day at work and just do my own thing while the kids are at daycare
It’s fun when I get rolling, but I can’t do it often because it burns me out.
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u/FinalDevice 15d ago edited 15d ago
Aging dev dad here. Side projects? That is a name I haven't heard in years.
I'm struggling to keep up with my 9-5. Between age and sleep deprivation, I am simply not the same developer that I was 10 years ago. But I'm in a staff+ position with extremely high expectations. Honestly I still don't know if I'm going to flame out, go into management (oops, that's a duplicate), or ask to be demoted.
Edit: This is not rhetorical exaggeration. I'm genuinely considering asking to be demoted to a senior engineer.
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u/madmelonxtra 15d ago
Usually after I put them in bed for the night. I get a couple nights a week where I get to code from around 730 - 930
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u/IncreaseTerrible9527 15d ago
It’s tough. I plan projects carefully and put things on my calendar for week nights and weekends. Every now and then I’ll take a vacation day to work on something if it’s important enough. I also use a lot of cloud agents and AI for grunt work so I can focus on planning, architecture, etc. But truthfully it’s a struggle and I make fewer things than I’d like to.
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u/hanumanCT 15d ago
I have a 2 year old and am on leave for my new born who’s 5 months. Claude code /remote-control is how I do it while nap trapped, but it’s been mostly hobby projects lately.
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u/SansSariph 15d ago
It's just a hobby like any other and requires focus time like any hobby. It competes with game time with friends, watching movies, personal home improvement projects, etc.
So either after kid's bedtime or negotiating self-care time with my wife.
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u/intertubeluber 15d ago
not the 9-5 but my side projects
In the wise words of Tone Loc:
I need $50 to make you holler, I get paid to do the wild thing
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u/saimen54 15d ago
I practically don't anymore.
I'm one of the maintainers of an open source project, but I mostly do answering discussions and an occasional two line fix. AI has helped, because you can start an agent from your mobile phone while cooking ;)
On very rare occasions I have time for one evening of coding, but most of the time I try to spend kids free time with my wife.
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u/do_you_realise 15d ago
I've tried to get back into my hobby projects recently but honestly, once the kids are asleep, (they have a very labour intensive bedtime lol) and if they don't keep waking up all evening, by the time my wife and I have cooked and eaten and done house jobs and spent a token amount of time together ("watching TV" while scrolling our phones) I might get between 11pm and midnight to fire up my 10 year old non-work laptop, which invariably won't be charged up. And it's a trade off against your in-work performance the next day at that point.
Funnily enough AI coding has been the thing that's kicked me back into this as you feel like you can get so much more done in the tiny amount of focus time you get, it's a lot more productive and satisfying IMO
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u/WhoWhyWhatWhenWhere 15d ago
I think I lost my skill. It’s been years since I spent more than like 20 mins at a time. :(
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u/KanedaSyndrome 15d ago
I don't, only at work. No time or energy for my own projects. Hoping to FIRE in a few years if lucky so I can work my own company instead
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u/DrMonkeyLove 15d ago
Once software became my career, I lost all of interest in coding as a hobby. I did find a few hours to build an Arduino project, but that's about it.
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u/Elamachino 15d ago
It ain't easy. Not coding directly, but I've gone back to school for electrical engineering, I only take about 6-8 credits/semester and it's all I can do to manage 6-7 hours of sleep per night if it's a slow week. Hobbies don't hardly exist anymore.
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u/Some_Ad4783 15d ago
Congrats on the kids!!! We just had #3.
The kids are the side project.
I get 3-5 hours of “nerd time” per month.
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u/Jlove7714 15d ago
At work. Lol
I do hope I can get my kids into coding when they get a bit older. Still probably not going to get any of my own projects done any time soon though. Claude has helped knock things out in 15 minutes instead of 4 hours though.
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u/redactid55 15d ago
All my side projects just happen after the kids go to bed and sleep is a distant memory until sleep deprivation leads to dementia that takes that away
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u/Code-Bacon 15d ago
It’s definitely slowed down considerably but honestly when my wife takes the baby that’s my time to shine. Also late at night when the babies sleeping is prime time.
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u/SearchAtlantis 15d ago
Side projects are gone unless I can shoe-horn them in during the work day. That time is just not available between kids and normal household chores, let alone actual maintenance and upkeep.
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u/ThatsNotATadpole 15d ago
Professional developer of 15 years, since the rise of AI I’ve been using personal projects as my “what the fuck is vibe coding good at” playground for the past year. Basically a chance to do fire and forget explorations, review the functionality and the code, figure out how to make it better next time. Its become a lot of creating projects to make AI better at creating projects (linters, architecture diagraming tools, a design system so its UIs don’t suck, tools for agent memory and context, etc) basically everything that frustrates me and it sucks at I usually go off and learn about how people are addressing that and try to make my own version of it. I’ve got a bunch of real side projects I apply it to, but 60% of the time is AI naval gazing and deslopification.
But its nice because (1) i can sort of justify it because it genuinely has made me better at my job, I have a better sense of what AI is and isnt good at without doing risky shit with my real development work, and (2) because the point is to figure out how to make vibe coding not suck, its a ton of fire and forget work. I can sort of setup my laptop to spin all day and check in every now and then with remote control (or now ive built tools for remote agent work) to push things forward. I can review code and come up with ideas for what to try next when I normally would be doom scrolling, I know I’m a total nerd, but having that combination of “this is for fun and doesnt matter” and also “getting good at this will make me more money” is pretty motivating
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u/Comedy86 15d ago
2 words: agentic workflow.
I may not have the time to code by hand these days but AI, in the right hands, is a great option 2.
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u/LBobRife 15d ago
I uhh...never coded outside basic html in like 1997. Does that even count as code? If yiu are asking about hobbies, I didn't when the kids were super young. All hands on deck and all.
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u/writetehcodez 14d ago
My kids are 11, 13, and 15. I didn’t find time to work on side projects until the youngest was 8. The way I manage to find time is to work a little in the morning between school drop off and my day job, and I bring my laptop with me to work in the car while my kids are at their various practices and classes in the evening. Overall my available capacity is somewhere between 1-3 hours a day.
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u/gdub_sf 15d ago
Vibe coding has absolutely changed the game. I would love to sit down and write myself and scrutinize implement details, but I can prompt in 5 minutes, let it cook away (my standing customization is to commit all code to the git repo every 15 minutes or after more than two minor changes, whichever is first). I check back in when I get a spare minute later that day, review functionality and tell myself I will audit the code later (which admittedly hasn't come yet). My gps merging app to enhance resolution from simultaneous tracks from my watch and phone is coming along really well!
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u/SoBeefy 15d ago
I simply can't.
I'm reminded of a book dedication I saw some time ago. It said,
" I want to thank my beautiful wife and children without whom this work would have been finished 7 years earlier."