Recreational Programming: Rediscover the Joy of Coding Without Getting Paid
Christopher Phiri's talk explores recreational programming—coding for pure joy, not work or money. He defines it, contrasts it with side hustles or career grinding, and identifies five styles: Live Explorer, Deep Diver, Creative Technologist, Problem Solver, and Language Explorer. The talk highlights common patterns like building 'useless' things and following energy, then offers practical steps to create your own programming playground. Real-world examples include Tsoding Daily, ThePrimeagen, Casey Muratori, Ben Eater, and Dan Luu.
The only rule: Stop if it stops being fun.
- mrandish
The definition perfectly describes how I started out in computers in 1981. Brought home a 4K, 8-bit computer from Radio Shack that I could barely afford and hooked it to the TV. Had never touched a computer before, zero prior knowledge and only had the manual in the box (which was surprisingly good). No one I'd ever met owned a computer at home or used one at work and I'd never really considered that you could make money with computers. I just thought the games seemed fun and the idea of learning about programming seemed cool. Turns out typing in long listings from B&W hobbyist zines and then finding all the typos was a fine way to learn.
Teaching myself assembler was harder because I had no docs. I was so clueless I actually looked up Motorola in the phone book and called to ask where I could get a manual. The sales rep who answered the phone must have taken pity on me because he mailed the CPU manual for free. I still have the purple reference card and remember the common opcodes by heart (https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Datasheets/M...)
The first time I made money was about 18 months later when I wrote a pretty handy disk utility program. Stayed up all Friday night finishing it. Copied onto floppies I sold for $5 at the local user's group Saturday morning. Made $140 and got my first 28 customers. That was enough to get me hooked on making software and selling it. ~40 years, three startups, over a dozen products, hundreds of good people employed, a couple mi […]
- ktm5j
Programming for fun as a kid was a great way to learn.. however as an adult burnout is a killer, if I don't leave work at work then I turn into a mess pretty quickly. I'm pretty confused about how they think "recreational programming" prevents burnout, it sure doesn't in my experience.
- prophesi
Recreational programming used to be one of the rubrics to hire a software developer. If you have an intrinsic motivation to code, it would often be more valuable than your credentials. That's why junior devs would push up sites showcasing their resume of random projects they've done outside of education in order to give them an edge over their competition. Some companies would even encourage some time on the clock for working on side projects to prevent burnout.
At the same time, some of the workers in the industry were disgruntled that you were expected to enjoy coding in your spare time to keep up. While some truly just wanted to do it because they were good at it, and would rather turn off the software dev brain after work to do other things they enjoy in life.
With the advent of high-performing LLM's for coding, though, it seems more important to showcase how you can harness AI for your recreational projects than the projects themselves. It's a bit of a catch-22 for junior devs though.
I still think it's good rubric to get into programming if you like to do it recreationally, but these are just a few of my thoughts on how it can be problematic.
- smnplk
Shout out to Tsoding [1]. He is my favorite recreational programmer.
- 1dontknow_
Is this a slideshow or what exactly? I mean clearly its not an article, but also slideshow Id expect more images and make it more skimmable and have a sense whats front or back and which page Im at.
Im sorry I really wanted to read what you wrote but please put it in a proper form because right now its uncomfortable.
- passive
I did not like how this handled scrolling, made my navigation feel constrained. Maybe I was supposed to use the keyboard to navigate? It doesn't seem particularly clear.
- severak_cz
I can definitely see myself in there. I am mostly problem solver but each problem it's also place for explorign new ideas and/or developing some in-house library which gets reused over and over. Also I get easily distracted and thrown into some ADHD sidequest and end up with font tool which can also render maps.
- gauntr
I feel that. I got into programming because of video games. At some point I wanted to know how they are made and wanted to create something on my own. Through a friend I got known to BlitzBasic3D and shortly after BlitzMax. I learned to program while making games, just for me, most things never got released. I spent hours deep into the mornings at time and loved it. It's quite some years since I felt like that and had the energy and motivation to go on and on without hesitation.
I studied computer science and became a paid software engineer, all the experiences with BlitzMax laid out a good foundation for me (RIP Mark Sibly and thank you for your work), and while I like what I do, I don't love it like I did this game programming back then. These days I tend to look out for opportunities to create something that pays my bills or ultimately frees me of having to be employed but often enough I don't get myself to work on it because it's work after my paid work without knowing if that pays out and then the thought "Is it worth my time?" comes up even though the project itself might be even really interesting to pull off.
From time to time I looked back into game programming and every time I felt that little flame light up again. It's been a while now and I even have 2 ideas that I'd like to see implemented. After reading this I realize how much I crave this kind of programming currently. Should probably spend some time doing that :)