I’m an older dude whose phase of staying up all night playing was back in the early console days. I prefer in-person tabletop RPGs like D&D, Traveller and Call of Cthulhu. Just not into computer games anymore, but that and social media seem to be most people’s primary computer activities.
Game chatter has changed over the years - I used to see a lot of talk about graphics quality and massively powerful hardware - maybe that was during a period when it was rapidly improving, I dunno. But the current focus seems to be more on game industry business decisions sucking.
Anyway I’m just wondering how common it is to use computers more for coding and other technical non-game stuff.
A lot of people in IT, especially programmers I have met, are completely uninterested in gaming.
To be sure, there are PLENTY of gamers in IT, but many people I have met are done with computers once they get home.
My friend, a longtime Java dev, hasn’t written a line of code since his last day at work. I do lots of hobby coding and will probably die at the keyboard lol.
I work with several devs who would rather never see a computer again.
LOL there should be an Amish-like community where some tech people can live after they leave the field.
Low tech commune.
Or maybe just a place that has tech but they’re not involved at all in running it, and definitely not expected to be the default tech support lol.
I was trying to imagine it and can’t imagine seeing new tech and not putting my hands on it.
They would have counselors available.
I’m not cut out for this.
I can see why
Ha, I’m the other way. I recovered my joy in a coding as a hobby once I stopped doing it at work. And yes, it was Java at work, and no, not Java as a hobby.
Similar- my web career was ASP and ASP.Net, but once I finally retired I gave up C# and dove into Node.js. Way more fun IMO.
My first web project was a contract job at Microsoft in the Visual Studio team, when it was still called Visual Interdev. ASP was so new my boss said only a couple hundred people in the world knew how use it. That was a life-changing moment - I’m talking sunbeams bursting in and angels singing. I remember thinking, “Holy crap how did I land here???” From that day on I did nothing but web dev.
I work from home, but yeah, as soon as the day is over I kind of need to get away from the PC for a bit.
Which is a shame, because I also love (or loved) PC gaming, and have a bunch of great games which I never feel like playing because they’re “at work”.
For me it’s the amount of debugging it takes to get new games to run. Most games these days come with some sort of third party launcher or drm that takes a lot of work to kill in order to get them running.
I just spent 12 hours debugging because of shitty-closed source software that i have to work around, i dont want to do it again.
Ugh, that sucks. I can understand not wanting to go back to the same environment once you clock out for the day.
Yeah - that and family time too of course, bit anti-social if I head straight back to the office after dinner 😁
And this why I have a PS5.
Yeah, PS4 here - but I’m itching to get back into Half Life 2 again… :-)
I’m a developer and games are a snooze fest in my book. I’m just always frustrated and think too much about how it was programmed and want to change stuff; I never get into the world of the game.
When I first got into VR though it was mind-blowing. I’m an on again, off again VR user and haven’t thrown any more money into it but it’s a great way to exercise.
I think people generally nowadays care more about their health (physical and mental), and spending whole days in the front of a computer screen is not a good idea.
Woah this blows my mind. I thought I was just weird.
I learned this early on in my career, when I was in college actually. I wanted to talk with a coworker who was already in IT and found he had zero interest in memes, games, or anything ‘nerd culture.’