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.
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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.
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.
many people I have met are done with computers once they get home.
This is me. After 25 years in corporate IT, I have little to no interest in sitting down at a computer anymore. My personal box only gets turned on a few times a month. Casual browsing and such is done on mobile, gaming on console. Once upon a time I spun up VMs for fun and knew everything that was running on my system. Never had the patience (or desire) to go full Linux, and between work sucking out the joy and enshittification overrunning modern commercial OSes, I just stopped having the energy to get excited. So the box only get used when I have something to do that’s more involved than light spreadsheet work etc.
I am very much a Lemmy outlier lol.
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 😢
Practice makes perfect!
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 do play games, but I also work on creative projects and watch shows/movies on my computer. I use Illustrator to create typeface designs, graphic design for laser cutting or stickers, 3D modeling and slicing programs for my 3D printer, Google Docs for writing, coding for Raspberry Pi and Arduino projects, et al.
3d modeling and printing are major things now. I’m into that as well, and also playing with Arduino and ESP32 for home automation and building little robotic tings. Writing code has always felt kind of like a game to me.
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 rarely play games on my computers, coding is the bulk of what I do, the rest is data analysis, email and research.
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’m not a gamer. Work at computer all day, only mobile (no games either) outside work.
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 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
I’m a recreational coder first and foremost. Sometimes I play games, but rarely all the way through
I used to use mine for games but I don’t really play games any more. So for the last year or two my PC has been mostly dedicated to CAD, PCB design, coding, et cetera.
Audio! I’m a hobbyist musician.
Gaming is a close second.
That reminds me, for a long time I’ve had an idea for a piece of instrumental music that would be the intro to a video. I’m not a musician but used to play the piano a little. I do have a little synthesizer keyboard from when my kids were young. If I noodled out a melody on that and recorded it, is there software I could use to make it sound like multiple instruments, add drum effects etc. so it sounds real? I don’t know if there’s a musical term for doing that - flesh it out?
Maybe “arranging” or “composing”.
As for tools to make it happen: You can use a “DAW” (Digital Audio Workstation) which is how most people compose these days. I use Reaper because it’s a tiny download, very full featured, and cheap. Ableton is very popular and has the biggest community online. Cakewalk is completely free (with a sign up.) ProTools is what a lot of professionals use, though it’s dying a slow death because it’s very expensive, they’ve gone full subscription model, and the things it can do that drew people to it can be done just as well with other DAWs that aren’t so predatory.
A DAW won’t do the work for you, though. If you want something to make harmonies or drum beats for your melody for you, there are a lot of "plugin"s or "VST"s you can download that can help with that process. Or, if you just want to give something a melody and tell it to make a song, there are probably AI solutions these days.
Good luck! Beware the audio rabbit hole. This can be a cheap, or ridiculously expensive hobby.
