Forcing yourself to program

OK, so I'm self employed, which is to say, I live with my parents and have no formal income.

I'm working on an app that I think is really interesting, etc. But I find that whenever I come up to some annoying part, I work on it for like 10 minutes and then browse the internet for an hour.

SOme days I can work for 5+ hours without breaks, just because whatever section is interesting. But most days I end up going to sleep pissed off because I only did like an hours worth of work and wasted the rest of the time on the ienternet.

So give me tips, how do you get yourself through that incomprehensible yet somehow boring and repetitive code? I figure some of it is just because I dont have any sort of plan or anything for what i'm going to do (the app is pretty original) or when I'm going to do it, has that helped you? I've got no CS background or anything and i've always thought flowcharts were bullshit, but obviously some people like them.

I was working on it for like 6 months before i realized it was shit and started over, which was good for about a month but now i'm running out of steam. Yesterday I spent reading manga and today I tried to come up with a new meme for /b.

Sorry if this is bosnian, i wrote like 20 lines of code today. Fuck.

>>36
>Is it better to become an awesome (and kinda rich) coder or someone that has read all manga that is out there?

Clearly the latter.

lads, i'm undertaking a research degree and currently freelancing part time. i've previously worked for a company and let me tell you the only way we keep coding/designing and running the show is the following:

a) coffee breaks / cigarette breaks; cos you need it.
b) make sure you're shagging someone after work
c) lay off 4chan! cos it'll chew up your time like mad!
d) go and jerk off in the toilet to release steam every now and again. seg faults, nullpointers, whatever the issue may be. bad clients.. etc etc. overblown budget...
e) have your boss hire extrememly hot secretaries.... that way you want to come to work! besides, office xmas parties is a blast with heaps of hotties letting lose. and also refer to the point above. office hotties motivate everyone.
f) all else fails, chuck a sickie. take a day off instead of pretending to do work.

other than that, try to pace yoruselves and go for friday arvo drinkies. you'll feel so much better :)

quit moping about and sitting on your ass reading comic/manga or whatever. your time is money. make the most of it. speaking of which.. back to work :p

a)duh
b)mmmm....nah
c)duh
d)too much work, i'd rather type java with my penis than spend time jacking off at a toilet
e)what if you want nothing to with women?
f)something else

>>43
Find a guy then. I don't believe there's such a thing as an asexual human.

>>43
e)what if you want nothing to do with women?
Then you're a fag, or already tried them.

On the top right corner of the thread page, it says "Back to Programming"

>>45
Both.
>>44
Some people like to practice cetain skills known as strive, and resilience, I happen to be one of them, of course as is ever so unfortunately happens to be, my nuts continue hormone production, and my skills have not been the best at a time. Though all I can do is pickup and continue, certainly make an attempt at it, it really is quite similar to programming because if you really liked it a lot when would you ever want to run away from it. Or the ideal of course, liking it more than anything, so that there would be no other things that take your attention away from it, howver I'm pretty damn weak as of yet, failed battles all around against sleep, hunger, time, sexual desire and miscellaneous other forces that are working against my will and ability to slam down lines as consistently as I wish I did. But of course, I am continuing to work on it, wish me luck or something.
>>46
roger that

>>47
Dude, you sound like an ascentic. Wake up, your body isn't your enemy; this isn't the dark ages, man.

Your procrastination cures are about mixing in pleasure with the pain of programming.

But I started programming because it was pleasant all by itself. That was Turbo Pascal.

Now 90% of my time is looking up functions in bloated libraries and tracing bugs hidden deep in the layers of OO classes or script "abstraction".

That is not a creative act, so it is not fun.

I long for the old days of simple languages and small libraries. There is a spark here and there: Python, SDL, Forth; but nothing has ever matched the Zen of working in Turbo Pascal. 7 hours could go by and I wouldn't even feel it. There was no desire or thought of anything else but finishing the creative act. Only the pain of hunger or overwhelming fatigue would finally break my concentration.

Locating and understanding a function in the Turbo library took a minute at most, not all day like it so often does in modern packages. Even when you find a function that seems promising, you may still have to use trial and error to fully understand it.

Simplicity is the answer.

Forcing yourself to program is as easy as forcing yourself to draw art.