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.
longtime Java dev
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.’
i dont really game. my hobbies are more self-hosting, service related stuff. giant media library… distributed av system. lots of docker, server stuff.
the selfhosting communities have some interesting traffic
And home automation! Microcontrollers! I do try to game, but its just not that fun anymore. Nothing beats 8vs8 quake on school lan anyways
My main use is for porn.
Why do you think the net was born?
I never play, i always code… And i am not even that good at it 😢
4 hours and 52 comments, and not a single mention of what we all knew even before Avenue Q:
The Internet is for porn. Everything else is just what happens between porn.
More seriously, my desktop is where I do larger research that will require more than a couple of tabs. Little to no gaming there. Other PCs are mainly for videos.
I use the crap out of my computer.
-Video editing -Music editing -Word processing -Spreadsheets -Microprocessor programming -YouTube viewing -Image editing -Shopping -Investing -Web surfing -3D printing -CNC Routing -Website development
- Oh and gaming.
I spend a lot more time coding than playing games. It’s not unusual for me to not be active on steam for a month.
I use online games as a way to hang out with friends. Usually it’s about an hour or two a day. The rest of my computer time is spent coding or doing work stuff.
I rarely play games on my computers, coding is the bulk of what I do, the rest is data analysis, email and research.
I’m not a gamer. Work at computer all day, only mobile (no games either) outside work.
I don’t game very much (just recently I started playing outer wilds though a few times per week). I feel like I probably enjoy tweaking my laptop more than actually using it.😆 I dont even code much. I like finding open source alternatives to software and generally improve my laptop. Spent about 4months learning nixos:)
I don’t know, at least I might be able to help others improve their pc’s too
Hmm it’s difficult to quantify. On workday I spend an average of probably 6-8 hours on a computer with job related tasks. Not really coding most of the time, since we’re maintaining and building a network, so it’s more configuration, planning, coordination, and documentation work. Some days we’re out to actually deploy hardware, or run around and debug stuff, so it’s hard to estimate the average screentime.
My free time involves a lot of computer time too, but it is split up into more smaller categories, either on the desktop computer or the smartphone computer. Manga, Games, Youtube, Movies, Anime Series, Lemmy, Pornography, News, Banking and Investments.
In the end I think my job is the biggest unified chunk of time, but that’s kind of arbitrary, if I started subdividing it into different tasks maybe gaming would become the biggest chunk.
Linux stuff
this for me too
Audio! I’m a hobbyist musician.
Gaming is a close second.
Same as you. I used to game a lot (too much) in my younger days. Now I use the computer to support my tabletop gaming hobbies, 3d printing, a little coding, and streaming.
