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.
You must log in or register to comment.
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.
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”.
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 😁
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.
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
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 never play, i always code… And i am not even that good at it 😢
My main use is for porn.
Why do you think the net was born?
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 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 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’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 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.
My gaming PC became my self-hosted server around 5 years ago. Now it runs 24/7 serving up media through Emby, providing backup/cloud/vpn services to my mobile devices, DNS adblocking for everything on the LAN/VPN, password manager syncing, and whatever else I feel like playing with :)
Time, energy, and willpower just never seem to come together for gaming anymore. And on the rare occasions it does, that PC still games just fine; even after making the move to Debian last year.
Same as you. I used to game a lot (too much) in my younger days. Now I use the computer to support my tabletop gaming hobbies, 3d printing, a little coding, and streaming.
