What's stopping you from coding like this...?

We've all seen the memes, haven't we? A picture of someone with a laptop, working, in all different sorts of settings - under water, on a slope in fresh powdery snow, on a beach, ... all topped with the (ironic) caption "What's stopping you from coding like this?".

In case you missed it, here is an example (more below):

(There's also a variety of these where people are sitting on each others lap while coding - I don't even want to get into those 😅)

But while of course, these are clearly meant to entertain - for me, they do raise an issue that goes a little beyond just programmer humor and memes:

It feels like there is a lot of pressure to always be better. To keep up with the latest technologies, to ship faster, to always take it one step further.

People sharing their GitHub contributions, badges, yearly round ups, talking about consistency and how you can make it as well, if you just stick to xyz (and maybe purchase a course from them ^^).

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with consistency, coding in a hammock, on the beach or in a yoga pose, liking your job so much that you don't want to stop on the weekends. You do you.

But there is also lots of value in prioritising a work-life-balance, having hobbies away from a screen, or seeing coding as "just a job".

Just because it seems like some other people are pushing out new content every hour of the day, contribute to open-source while having a full-time job and a side hustle and apparently need no sleep - you don't have to.

So who ever needs to hear this - here's your friendly reminder, that it is perfectly ok to take things a little slower. That quality usually beats quantity, faster is not always better, and fancy coding locations usually come with a stiff neck and dust on your keyboard 😉

And, of course, there are always people gaming the system and hacking their GitHub contributions (like with this script) to make them look a lot more productive, than they actually are. So don't believe everything you see 🙏