Lonely coding
Coding all alone can be a problem. There are plenty of developer communities online, but sometimes I get stuck and just need a fresh pair of eyes to take a look at my code. I like working alone, but I also believe in code reviews and pair programming and that’s often not an option for me these days.
Yesterday I’d been struggling with a stupid SQLAlchemy error for hours and the error logs basically said “doing a rollback, something went WRONG”. The more the feeling of resignation came crawling, the smaller the chance of effective debugging. Before freelancing, when I always had a bunch of developers around, I would simply have asked one of them.
Luckily I have in-house expertise, living with a developer, but how do freelancers normally solve this problem?
1 commentAn Office!
I’ve been looking for an office space for a while. Staying in the apartment all day long simply isn’t working, I just hang around in my dressing gown all day not even bothering to brush my teeth in the morning. Cafés are nice, but not really an option, I have too hard a time focusing on my programming in busy environments.
I like having nice, skilled people to talk to, but I’m (still) not sure if I want to surround myself with IT entrepreneurs to get inspiration, or people with other areas of expertise to have an IT free zone where I don’t have to constantly be representative.
For now, I settled for the second option. At least until the summer, I’ll spend my days with underwear designer Noemi, photographer Elin and linguist Malin.
The office is quite close to home and very cozy and relaxed. It’s also very close to a nice yoga center where I can do my yoga and pilates. I try to make intuition based decisions and this feels good.
No commentsNot Having an Office
Being a freelance developer means often not having a job to physically go to. I love to be able to work from home, but unfortunately I don’t think it’s good to spend every day all by yourself. It’s hard to believe that anyone would stay sane for a longer period of time during these circumstances.
I don’t really want to go insane, so my plan is to spend not more than half of the estimated 40-hour-weeks at home. One afternoon a week I’ll be at Il Caffè, The Place To Be for freelancers here in Stockholm. When possible, I also plan to spend one day a week at my customers’ offices, even if most projects are of the type that I can just as easily do from home. It’s nice to hang out with the customers and it’s definitely a good way to make sure the communication works well without any larger effort. I’ll also start teaching programming for a couple of hours a week (preferably early in the mornings) so those days I might work the rest of the day from KTH as I’m already there.
But for the rest of the time I need a place in the apartment that’s not completely unergonomic. Right now I’m using the kitchen table and that’s not good for my back.
Ever since I moved to this apartment, a few months ago, I’ve had a vision of me sitting in the living room on my pilates ball that I use as chair (great for the back) at a glass table with my MacBook Pro, hacking away. IKEA has these kind of tables and they’re really cheap, so I think it’s time for an IKEA visit soon!
No comments
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