These days Caltrain is faster and has occasionally frustrating, but fairly good Wi-Fi, so now my constraints are that I don't have a large monitor but not really much else.
1. Cell service has become low-latency. This is very different from "fast", which it has also become! When I started working from the train (on HSPA+), pings in the hundreds of milliseconds were the norm. My first step was usually to SSH to a remote machine, and let just the text lag on me. Nowadays, I can run a Web browser locally without issue.
2. Cell service has, at the same time, become ubiquitous in subway tunnels. When I started, there were some areas that dropped down to EDGE (unusable), and some areas that had no service at all. Now, there is exactly one place on the Boston transit system - Back Bay Station - where I lose cell service.
3. Noise cancelling tech has gotten better. It's not just about noise cancelling headphones: both of my laptops (a 2024 MBP and a ThinkPad P14s) have microphones that can filter out screeching wheels and noisy teenagers quite well. That means I can take meetings without making them miserable for the people on the other end.
These, honestly, are a huge game-changer for me. The ability to take a 30 minute meeting while commuting, where otherwise I would've had to get in early or stay late at work, actually does wonders for my ability to have a life outside of work.
At the small cost of making everyone around you miserable.
Not in New York, unfortunately. All of the stations have cell service, and one tunnel (14th Street L train tunnel under the East River), but everywhere else has no service between stations. It’s an annoying limitation that most cities seem to have fixed by now.
The longer train I would use my laptop, same with the 20min underground section on the journey in (going home no chance), but for the packed train and the walk I listened to music (I still have my Diamond Rio PMP300, no idea if it still works, just remember downsampling music to 32kbps to get more on a memory card, quality was less important than quantity - I must have listened to David Gray’s album _White Ladder_ many hundreds of times).
Toshiba laptops (Satellite? I think they were before the Tecras), heavy and the battery life wasn’t much more than 90 minutes but it was just enough. Dual booting Windows and Linux. (Linux for dev work on the go…)
Obviously no mobile connectivity back then, I had to have a plan for what I was going to work on and that also involved backup plans if I ran into a blocker on the primary. Same for the way home.
A bit later I could get GPRS data rates via Infra-Red to my mobile and that just felt like magic.
I found the times I couldn’t be on my laptop (walking or on the packed train) were great for thinking problems through and often had to stop to scribble down thoughts/ideas/solutions in a notebook that I kept in the laptop bag.
Wrote so much useful code in that 18 months without the distractions of the Internet or emails or whatever.
Now I somehow find I have less time despite having virtually no commute. Technology has vastly increased the number of distractions and I have let myself succumb to them. Where I had no real choice in what music I listened to now I have too much choice. There’s always one last thing to check before I get on with a bit of work. Sometimes I wish for simpler times.
Now, as for "did I proceed with more serious learning" - I alternate though a ton of hobbies. So I moved on after that, though still go back to it from time to time. But I also have other musical interests and it was helpful to those as well.
Also did a lot of music on the commute on my iPhone with Korg Gadget (and Caustic before that). Sometimes with a keyboard, sometimes without.
It’s nice to be less tethered to a desk, while also not having to carry a backpack and heavier full laptop, but still able to remote in and do what I need to do. I really enjoy having a fully capable Linux PC in my pocket vs a smartphone.
Is it actually decent for typing on? I'm perennially tempted, but I'm somewhat skeptical of a small keyboard vs touch typing.
I sometimes do "iPad work", which is essentially researching, reviewing and annotating content on my iPad Mini. I will hop on my bike and work an hour or two in different locations, over coffee or in the sun. It's a relaxing break from working on a computer at a desk.
I do think that people should work in different places. Perhaps we'd have apps that work better on slow internet.
In my previous $dayjob I was That Guy who was getting pinged on chats and emails and people dropped in for "just a quick question". When I had to get work done on a deadline, I went to a cafe down the street, turned off the chats, got a massive bucket of coffee, put on my noise cancelling headphones and just ... worked. Later when the office got bigger (multiple stories in the same building), I "hid" on a couch at a complete different department for the same purpose.
That was almost 10 years ago and still my brain connects couches and cafes as deep work places :D
All my experience with public transportation is having to roll the dice and more often than not losing - having to stand while packed liked sardines into a bus or subway.