I program on the subway

Posted by evakhoury 7 days ago

256 points | 198 commentspage 3

ak217 1 day ago|

When I used to ride Caltrain to/from work, I would often have an uninterrupted stretch of 45+ minutes in a cozy single seat (I would always take an upper deck seat in the "gallery" car) to either doze off or use this time to focus on something. I would get so much done on those days if I managed to avoid the sun blasting too much sunlight on my screen/seat. This commuter rail experience is probably familiar to many of us, but it's specific to commuter rail - being a passenger on a subway or in a car/bus is too chaotic or bumpy to do this.

More generally, I find that switching up your surroundings is absolutely vital for your brain's ability to focus on hard tasks. I will hit a wall if I try to work multiple 10+ hour days sitting in one spot, but a comfortable spot in a different coffee shop or lounge can totally trick my brain into powering through.

throwaway2037 1 day ago|

    > This commuter rail experience is probably familiar to many of us, but it's specific to commuter rail - being a passenger on a subway or in a car/bus is too chaotic or bumpy to do this.

I second this. It is hard for me to do anything productive on a bus because the stop/start frequency is too high and more physically demanding than a train.

TheNewAndy 1 day ago||

I wrote nearly all of https://apps.apple.com/us/app/two-birds-one-stone/id15396463... on a train without internet. It was about a half hour journey, and I found that in such a short amount of time, I would set a small goal and work in a very distraction free way to achieve it. It was very good for doing small things, but sometimes doing larger things (like big refactors) is a bit more difficult. On occasion, I would also dedicate a train ride to just writing up a todo list.

I gave myself the rule of no internet while on the train, so sometimes I would just accumulate a list of questions I wanted to answer later.

There is definitely something to it, and you can get heaps done, but it needs to be supported with some non-train time (e.g. for me, it was all the app store stuff, debugging with real hardware, etc)

hoppp 1 day ago|

30 minutes can be plenty of time for implementing a feature. If you got your priorities straight.

ghostly_s 2 days ago||

Did this for a couple years on a 45 minute CTA commute in Chicago while I was learning to code outside my day job, it honestly made that commute not even feel burdensome. Key was that I was 1.) on the brown line, which was still running the 3200-series cars with plentiful seats, and 2.) at an early enough stop to reliably get one. And can confirm an old Thinkpad (x220 at the time) is the king of commute coding.

lukax 1 day ago||

17 years ago I went to a summer vacation with my family (still a teenager). That meant 10 days without any internet connectivity. I just got my first laptop and I was allowed to take it with me. I was reverse engineering MSN Messenger's user to user and profile picture exchange protocol from TCP dumps. MSN Messenger did not use any encryption. Before I went to the vacation I recorded a bunch of sessions with Wireshark (maybe it was still Ethereal back then). Then for 10 days I was just trying to figure out from the dumps how the binary protocol worked and was writing the code without any way to test it. When I came back I just had to fix some minor bugs and it worked. Fun times.

d4nyll 1 day ago||

Working on the metro makes a boring commute fly by - blink and you are at your destination already. 30 minutes each way is 1 hour a day. Over the entire year it's 250+ hours or 9 whole 16-hour days.

That's why whenever I move to a new city, I typically look to live somewhere that's at the end of the metro line. It meant in the morning commute I can _always_ get a seat.

That was one of the reasons I liked living in Hammersmith when I worked in Shoreditch/Old Street - it's at the end of the Hammersmith and City Line and I don't have to change lines. There's also the add bonus that the line is above ground until Paddington which meant I have more than enough time to load up any tabs I need to use before the Internet blackout.

In Hong Kong I worked at Central and lived in Tsuen Wan. Literally from one end of the line to the other. This had the added bonus that I was also guaranteed a seat on the way home as well.

meken 1 day ago||

> Currently I am working on affixing a split keyboard to my pants, so that I can program while standing up.

This reminded me of the "walking desk" Stephen Wolfram uses to program:

https://content.wolfram.com/sites/43/2019/02/07-popcorn-rig1...

I tried to use a similar one during Covid and couldn't get into it at all.

Myzel394 2 days ago||

I was in Philadelphia for a week and also used my commute time (2 hours in total each day) to program. As a web developer who uses Github Copilot and often checks documentation online, I did not have such a good experience as OP had. Mobile data is pretty much nonexistent in Philadelphia in the subway and there are also no wifi Hotspots. Sure, it was better than nothing, but I would quite often find myself waiting for the subway to arrive at stations and hoping that there is at least some internet connectivity there.

mncharity 2 days ago||

> I've had good conversations with strangers

Laptops sometimes have stickers. For a time, I instead had a transparent slip cover, to vary the sticker set, user-test alternatives, and throttle conversations. Science education topics (Boston/Cambridge subway). Anti-patriarchy stickers drew proto-MAGAs. Some backpacks now have low-res screens built into the back, suggesting new possibilities.

One Laptop Per Child, at its peak, generated fun continuous crowd conversations.

> a pair of glasses with a screen inside of them

I've no idea what current tech is like, but I use to proselytize aphysical UIs, where a small head motion results in larger screen motion, to reduce neck swiveling.[1]

> weirder

Laptop harness walking desks are a thing. And one can do hand and head tracking[2] (I had that setup at a meetup where the swag was little stick-on privacy shutters for laptop webcams :). Boston/Cambridge is perhaps culturally a best case for such games - I've not tried them in NYC... hmm.

> but something very complex, [...] instead sketch out a diagram on a piece of paper [...] keep a small notebook in my bag

Same. I've tried swapping in an iPad, but it hasn't stuck.

[1] silly old demo, 5k on a bus: https://x.com/mncharity/status/1225091755667853318 [2] https://imgur.com/a/keyboard-cam-Z1VipaL

Wowfunhappy 2 days ago||

I’ve done this before, but you need a relatively long subway ride without any transfers. IMO, 30 minutes is just barely at the edge of being worthwhile, and only if you can get a seat right when you get on, and only if the seat isn’t so cramped that it’s actually possible to get your laptop out of your bag. This happens rarely.

But on longer trips from e.g. upper Manhattan to deep Brooklyn, particularly at off-peak hours when I have room to spread out—yeah, I’ve had some very productive sessions.

yuhmahp 1 day ago|

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43894305

You can use commute time for day dreaming. It's not a waste of time

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