"My point is: an hour here and an hour there adds up! You have time, its just a matter of what you choose to do with it."
This trivializes the situation for full time employed programmers. Sure, you have spare hours intermixed throughout your work day, but these are not _productive_ hours. Your brain is worn out due to the effort spent in your 9 to 5 and distracted since when you're not at your job you have all sorts of other life responsibilities to manage (eat, exercise, socialize, family).
The author has a busy family life and a full time job and is still able to find 20 hours a week to work on his own thing. I find this very impressive.
I worked like this for a time before leaving my full time job last August. I found full time + half time + the rest of life was unsustainable. At first I made progress but quickly the rest of my life began to suffer. My relationship with my girlfriend became strained. I barely saw my friends or did things I enjoyed. Burnout started to appear. I got to the point where I realized that none of my programming hours were as productive as they once were. I was working more but getting about the same amount done.
I'm not saying it's not possible. It's just not as easy as he is making it sound. He is right that as a developer I was sitting on a gold mine but the mining didn't really begin until I quit my day job and focused.
This trivializes the situation for full time employed programmers. Sure, you have spare hours intermixed throughout your work day, but these are not _productive_ hours. Your brain is worn out due to the effort spent in your 9 to 5 and distracted since when you're not at your job you have all sorts of other life responsibilities to manage (eat, exercise, socialize, family).
The author has a busy family life and a full time job and is still able to find 20 hours a week to work on his own thing. I find this very impressive.
I worked like this for a time before leaving my full time job last August. I found full time + half time + the rest of life was unsustainable. At first I made progress but quickly the rest of my life began to suffer. My relationship with my girlfriend became strained. I barely saw my friends or did things I enjoyed. Burnout started to appear. I got to the point where I realized that none of my programming hours were as productive as they once were. I was working more but getting about the same amount done.
I'm not saying it's not possible. It's just not as easy as he is making it sound. He is right that as a developer I was sitting on a gold mine but the mining didn't really begin until I quit my day job and focused.