There is some buzz around the topic “I prefer or not you to code in your spare time”. I guess it all started with Ted’s post. I think it is just an excuse if somebody tells you: “we are not hiring you because you don’t program in your spare time”. I like both developing and designing personal projects. By definition personal projects don’t provide any income (at least at the beginning) so you end up working on them during the evening or the weekend. But … there are weekends I don’t want to see anything which has to do with technology. Will you hire me anyway? Will you like the part of me which refuses technology during Saturday and Sunday? More provocative: is it negative to the success of your project that I live 48 hours of my life avoiding technology and specifically computers?
I will anticipate my final moral: you shouldn’t care, but let’s see why.

Let’s exaggerate by reversing the reasoning. I am a project manager and I say: “you absolutely have to code in your spare time, on some project of yours, otherwise I’ll not hire you”. How many people will file a cv in this case? Probably a few. The same holds for the opposite statement: “you absolutely have not to code in your spare time. Don’t touch any computer during the weekend”. More or less the result should be the same, few candidates. Why? Because you sort of invade privacy. There are many people around that don’t care of the job itself, it is just a means to get an income. If you want somebody committed to your project then prepare yourself to do many interviews and, moreover, you will discover the commitment only after one month (or more) you hired the programmer. You can be more lucky if you spread an inspiring call for job, with a few technical requirements and much more details about the motivation behind the project. Something like: “we are working on a project that will revolutionize the way people blog” can help you to be surrounded by people that share with you an objective.

In case you already have a project, somebody working on that, and you need someone’s help to not pass the deadline, don’t bother with their private life. Let’s say you need a php programmer to finalize part of a project. Let’s also pretend you find somebody so in love with php and technology which contributes to some open source project during his spare time. This can be be a double-edged sword. In the best case you are lucky, because the person you hire knows tips and tricks of php, many of which -probably – have been learnt during spare time programming. You hired a genius, and you are sure your project will be successful. Let me be evil.

• what if the genius gets involved in a toy project, more engaging than yours?
• What if he starts working during the evening, maybe going to bed late?
• Will his brain be fresh and ready for your project the day after?
• Will his attention be the same of the day before?
• More evil: what if he works on the open source project during the weekend? That’s what you want right?
• What if on Monday he is a bit tired of staying in front of a monitor with a php editor open?
• What if his spare time passion causes even a temporary indigestion?

I think that you don’t want that.
A spare time passion can feed or subtract energy to your project, whatever the passion is. If I go skying during the weekend and I arrive home sunday night, late, on monday I can be satisfied and ready to work as well as tired and not ready to code for your project. In the second case, will you ever tell me I should quit skying? Will your job post include a “no snow riders” restriction? I think no.
Passion for ‘x’ does not mean you do or you want to do ‘x’ everyday. Also, passion for programming does not imply you code all day and night. It means you read and write books/posts about programming, subscribe to rss and podcasts, stay updated with news, look at someone’s code etc. EVERY developer does it, otherwise he is not a developer. Just like ANY designer feeds his creativity by taking pictures or getting inspired by the nature. Just like ANYBODY chooses his on way to spend the weekend.
Last provocation: in my life I met many developers and I noticed that many of them like to drink beer. Will you include that as a requirement when you post a job call? :)
I think you should not focus your search on what a developer/designer does during his spare time. You should rather focus on professionalism and seriousness. If I do what you want, without passing the deadline, isn’t enough?

After six months of iPhone these are my reflections, in the form of “The iPhone is a …”

Time saver

The only thing to complete your daily todo list is to wait for an email and redirect it to someonelse? Go to the beach, play volley and in the pause between one set and the other check the email and reply/redirect accordingly.

Angryness preventer

You have to go to pick your girlfriend up. You’d really like to check some more news or finish reading a blog post, but you agreed to be at her place at 9 pm. You are on time, she is late. With no iPhone you’d probably feel angry. Grab your iphone out of the pocket and finish checking news. Stumbled upon something interesting? Use Read It Later.

Boredom preventer

Bored to wait at the bus stop? Nobody to talk to and the bus is late? Open one of the tons of applications and play with it. Side effect: might loose the bus.

Good guide

Looking for a bank around you? a bar? Open up Around Me and find what you need.
Got lost. Open the Maps application and follow the path to get to your destination.

Cool to program

Tired of virtual machined/garbage collected languages? Looking for some new development platform to expand your knowledge and your business? Have a look at the iPhone. I bought it because of development purposed (top secret at the moment) and I ended up with the iPhone as my daily technological companion. There is plenty of tutorials, books, forums and open source code to learn from.

Probably everything I described above can be experienced with some other 3G enabled phone, except the cool-to-programness, which is what I appreciate mostly at the moment.

Today Focused 0.7 has been released.

Here is the change log:

• implemented hiding of menubar on macosx
• hiding of secondary monitors
• added Save As shortcut
• added word-count (optionally displayed, check the settings)
• wanna open a txt file right in Focused? just drag it over its icon (or shortcut)

The new version can be downloaded from Focused home page or via automatic update.


Enjoy!