Ask HN: What do you do on weekend?

25 points by anildigital ↗ HN
What do you do on weekend? (for programmers)

68 comments

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Code with less interruptions.
Ditto. Code my own projects with little to no interruptions.
Make sure I spend some time outside away from the computer and technology in general...
Very successfully in your case!
Curious as to what your reply is referring to?

(Still Friday here..)

Exactly the same as during the week. As I work for myself weekends are normal days like any other. I just take random days off with no regard for what name they have.

My wife has always worked weird shifts (and is now off for a year on maternity leave) so it works family-wise.. and we don't have to wrestle with the horrible weekend crowds at places. The only real benefit of the weekend is less e-mail to deal with :)

Read and fiddle with code by day. Hang out and imbibe with friends by night. I've been doing a lot of tea tasting around Seattle lately too.
Is this only what I do programming wise, or for all programmers? Cause I:

* mow the lawn

* exercise

* clean the house

* watch some TV with my wife

And then programming-wise, I work on my side projects and work on building my own software company.

What's a weekend?
The 2 days you allocate to every week to keep yourself from burning out in 3 years and then spending 7 months doing nothing but following links on Reddit.
doing nothing but following links on Reddit

ah, the good old corporate job.

Which means you shouldn't be at work on those two days of the week.
At this point I plan for burnout. It's just part of my productivity cycle. Small burnouts happen 1-2 times a year and involve about a week of doing nothing; large burnouts happen every 2-4 years and require a couple months. This happens with or without weekends.
Aren't those supposed to be called "vacations"?
What's a vacation?

Seriously, can we cut out the tech-babble so everyone can follow.

(comment deleted)
reddit's still around? I though all the users moved to HN?
Saturday is my sleep-in day, Sunday is Erin's. I'm on the hook for dinner Saturday night; I try to do something interesting. Sunday night I tend to watch TV.

In between, I get some super-unproductive computer time in and hang out with the kids. Recently, it's been Mindstorms. Last weekend we picked apples. This weekend is my sister's wedding. Next weekend I owe my son his belated promised Dim Sum birthday lunch.

A couple weekends from now, I'm doing a class in Chicago for cryptography for security testers. If that works out well, I'll probably try to do some kind of class every other month. A class occupies two weekends, one for the class (and dinner afterwards) and one before that to rehearse.

More than you wanted to know, but hey, thanks for giving me the chance to straighten my schedule out in my head.

Reminded me to check the website for the local orchard. Golden Delicious picking scheduled to start next weekend. Yum! And a few hours in the orchard is generally one of the highlights of the year. :-)
Always go earlier in the year than you think you should; right now is perfect. :)
Microclimate keeps this one a bit behind others in the area, in addition to the region running a bit late this year. But will try to be there on the first day they open up the Golden Delicious to picking.
The same things I do any other time.
Get out of the house for my family's sake. (With them of course.) We also sleep or watch a movie in the afternoon if my son is tired and needs a nap.

At night I try to be productive and hack, or I do some research/reading since my mind is not fatigued.

Some times I even meet with friends on weekends.
If it's like the last two weekends, I'm going to be working. so far 18 days without a proper day off.
I hope you are working for you own company. If not, maybe you should be...
Well, it was only ~5-10 hours per weekend 2 weekends in a row, and it was in the name of making stuff easier for my team for the future. In general, I like my job.

And I actually got out on my bike the past two weekends without working, got some computers built to hopefully find their way into the homes of school kids who need something simple at home, and I'm about 18 chapters deep into Snow Crash, which I feel REALLY BAD for putting off for so long. Never read it before.

Email bloggers, or reply. Email distribution partners, or reply. Make changes on the site. Then from 11PM until 2 AM I actually go out.
The same thing I do every weekend, Pinky...
Try to take over the world!
(comment deleted)
Play with the kids and try to get caught up on my homework for my Master's program.
Sometimes I'm on the computer, sometimes not, but I always try and catch the Arsenal match (whether on TV or some online feed).
Get the hell away from a computer. Heh, that sounds negative. I love by job but I find it easiest to keep balanced by getting away as much as I can for the weekends. For me, that's hiking, climbing, and back-country skiing. I pay for managed hosting for a reason.

Or work on code of a more interesting variety. As a startup founder, there's usually an interesting problem percolating in the back of my mind, and some days just finding a nice coffee shop and working on code with less distractions is perfect.

Anymore I write more software on Saturday & Sunday than I do M-F. So which one is my weekend?
Some combination of:

Programming, Reading, Drinking, Poker, PC Gaming (Urban Terror, StarCraft, UT3, Quake), Magic: The Gathering, Catching up on entire seasons of good shows, Movie theater, Shopping (food), Walking (w/dogs)

Big fan of being home on the weekend. I like my home.

Surf, learn and practice bushcraft techniques, daydream about owning a campervan for kids/bikes/surboards, take photographs of clouds, go fishing but never catch anything.
I brew and/or drink beer! Camping, computer games, ultimate frisbee as well.
I would be glad to share, but I cannot remember.