Here is a description of the daily commute by Michael Milken, 1980s junk bond king, as told in "Predator's Ball" by Connie Bruck:
At 5:30am each weekday in the early 1970s, a bus pulled up to a stop in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and a young man lugging a bag that bulged with papers mounted its steps. He was making the two-hour commute to New York City, where he worked at the investment banking firm of Drexel Firestone. The train would have provided a more comfortable and faster ride; but, for those very reasons, it also offered more opportunity to meet other Wall Street acquaintances. They would want to engage in the kind of idle small talk that commuters share to pass the time. The thought must have been intolerable. He did not wish to be rude, but he wanted no interruption.
As soon as he had settled into his seat, being sure to take one with an empty one adjacent, he unloaded a mountain of prospectuses and 10ks (annual Securities and Exchange Commission filings) onto the seat next to him. On winter mornings the sky was still pitch black and the light on the bus was too dim for him to be able to read. He wore a leather aviation cap with the earflaps down; he had been bald for years, and although he wore a toupee his head always felt cold on these frosty mornings. Now over his aviation cap he fitted a miner's headlamp -- strapped around the back of his head, with a huge light projecting from his forehead.
Unfortunately I can't program on a bus, I get motion sickness. Subway works very well though! It insulates me from most distractions. The only problem is that the longest subway commute I ever had was about 45 minutes; solid 2 hours would allow for so much more! :)
A buddy of mine had the same thing. He started taking the light rail into downtown and purposefully parked at one of the early stops instead of taking the bus in. He said he would sit and code on his side projects for around the same amount of time. In the span of a year, he knocked out several small mobile apps and several social media plugins.
He said the benefit was being able to spend more time with his family at night when he got home. He knew he would have some time on the train, so not having to crack his laptop to get in some coding after dinner allowed him to spend a lot more time handling the kids and spending time with his wife.
"Work/Life balance achieved!" he used to proclaim with a big smile when we'd sit and chat.
My commute to work is quite long but there is no "sitting" in Tokyo's trains in mornings/evenings so I program on a smartphone. Yes, it's not impossible but it takes time to get used to it.
have you ever considered a nanote from donki? I've been using one as a paired terminal and with the right os (debian, no GUI) it stays cool enough and gets good battery, same with the gpd handhelds
I would go for some affordable AR glasses + a one-hand chord keyboard. No need to hold a device in one hand and operate it with another, while standing awkwardly bent down.
I generally just thumb-type on it with the hinge bent at 180°. I have a colleauge who tried the meta AR glasses and found the display smudgey with his 20/20 vision and my quest 3 I found very screen door-y, though I will admit I liked the apple vision pro's display, I have a fair bit of pessimism about the field as a whole atm, but would like to be proven wrong
I’ve recently learned to downvote/flag and not respond to green names. The number of new accounts coming in hot with inflammatory takes lately has seemed higher to me, but admittedly this is purely a “vibe,” I have no numbers to back it up.
When I was living in Paris I had a 20 min ride from home to work each day. I picked up the habit to read during those 40 total minutes and I was going through books like I had never been able to, because while 40 min is not a lot, it’s about 150h per year. One easily underestimates the power of consistency.
I read many books a year by reading for 20-30 minutes per night before sleeping. A habit with multiple benefits (winding down and reading or commuting and reading) is very powerful for getting the most value out of your time.
It's not just you, I hear this often, but I am always suprised people can read for so long in bed. No matter how interesting a book is, I can rarely read more than 20-30 minutes before the urge to fall asleep becomes too strong.
Reading is usually more passive than coding. I'm often never sleepy if I'm actively coding something late at night but reading a book (no matter how engaging) or watching a tv show can very easily make me sleepy. That said, everyone's brains work very differently.
This is just so weird. In general coding won't let me fall asleep but a book 100% will never let me sleep until I finish.
I also find the idea of "forcing" yourself to read rather peculiar, but we're all different people. I wonder if there's genuinely something different in how the brain reacts.
This happens to me about once a year. I’m much more likely to stay up later than planned while doing other activities such as watching tv, coding, talking, social media, or spending time with my partner.
To offer a counterargument: I would strongly recommend aspiring and avid readers to not make reading in bed your primary / only mode of reading. It will make your brain associate books with sleep and thus make you turn drowsy the moment you have turned a few pages.
I stopped because I would feel sleepy and also feel like I didn’t get what I was reading and would forget the book. I suppose that’s something of a champagne problem.
I wore out the elbows of quite a few shirts lying on my side in bed reading. This was during the time I would go to the local science fiction bookstore every Saturday and buy three or four books, ocassionally finishing them by Monday.
I also used to read my commute but stopped it after I finished "for whom the bell tolls". I was so moved that I ended up crying in the bus and I would have liked to experience that feeling in the privacy of my home rather in the morning bus with 9 hours still on the clock.
I commute to the office 1-3 times a week, it's about 30 minutes on the train + some walking.
I've gone through so many books it's crazy :)
With audiobooks I can start listening the second I step out of the door and stop while I take my jacket off in the office. With e-books I usually just read on the train.
Most books aren't that long, around 5 hours a week of reading just during your commutes is quite a bit.
For one year I read every free moment averaged a book every 3 days mostly biographies many on wrestling. The year I got an e-reader (alura tech). Stopped after the screen broke.
I do the same with language learning. Makes me actually enjoy commuting to work since I find it hard to study at home. I just pop in the headphones, take a seat, and sit for 40 mins twice a day. Sometimes I even intentionally take the non-rapid so I can study a bit more (plus the train is less packed so I'm always guaranteed a seat)
Many years ago, before mobile internet was reasonable and before wireless internet was available, and before even electrical outlets were something which could be counted on to be present on trains, I took a 6 hour train ride. I had no laptop. I printed out, on paper, the entire source code of the project I was working on, and brought a red pen. I read through the whole thing, from start to finish. Many subtle bug fixes, refactorings, and efficiency improvements were made that day.
A few years ago, I spotted a guy on the underground in Warsaw, hacking on some code in a language I didn't recognize, but it was definitely assembly of some sort. Being shy, I resorted to throwing curious glimpses at his laptop for a few stations, but eventually curiosity got the better of me and I asked ‘sorry, is this ARM’? To which the guy replies, smiling, ‘ah no, it’s MIPS!’
Now I program casually in public spaces, including the underground, on my GPD Micro PC [0]. It, too, has attracted numerous glimpses and been a conversation starter on some occasions.
that's a fun story! i program on the train often due to occasional long commute (hour one way), but I live in finland so people are much less likely to talk to me, a stranger on the train, out of blue. On couple occasions I wanted to talk to another coder on the train when I notice their laptop stickers (a gamejam sticker or a sticker saying that this laptop is property of company X) but felt too self-conscious to do that cause they looked very focused
> they would have to do it at a station, where they could immediately get off the train. I think, though, that this would be risky, given that subway stops generally have a lot of people getting on/off the train in the first place.
I've seen a phone jacking in this exact scenario and nobody moved to stop the guy running. Nobody on the train can help cause the doors have closed, and nobody on the platform has any idea anything just happened, or if they do the guy is well gone before they can put two and two together.
For me I always pocket my phone or e-reader at each stop, unless I'm in Japan or Taiwan.
Here's my experience with (attempted) theft on a train:
I once was on a MARC train at DC Union Station. Some train cars have electrical sockets, so I plugged in a bike light I had since I'd be taking a bike for the last part of the trip. The train hadn't left the station yet. I was standing near the seat with the socket. Some unassuming looking guy was walking through the train car, like probably 100 did before him, when he grabbed the light, unplugged it, and kept walking. I immediately confronted him (I was in his path) saying something like "What are you doing?" Without a word, he handed me the light and walked off the train. I found a conductor like 15 seconds later and they called security, who apparently detained the guy.
This guy was way more brazen about stealing something of little value than I had expected. I was standing near the seat and watching it! I guess he didn't expect me to be the owner.
I'm a Japan resident... whenever I'm outside of Japan, friends have to remind me to not "leave my laptop out like that" nor hold wads of visible cash or keep my smartphone on the table.
Cafes... I'll go to the bathroom or whatever and just leave my stuff all out on the table, meanwhile with my high-end bicycle parked unlocked and out-of-view outside.
It, of course, isn't like this EVERYWHERE in Japan, but many many places.
I'm not worried about the laptop. Pretty much everyone knows that any valuable laptop is a tracking device anyway.
You should be worried about getting actually robbed, or even being attacked for no reason, while you're not paying attention.
Also, yes, nobody's going to help you. Some of it is because of general unawareness, as you point out. Then, it's difficult to know who's the aggressor. Even if that's all crystal clear, you're almost certainly going to deal with months or years of legal hell if you intervene. Successful interventions often lead to prosecutions.
You say this but I've seen countless videos of Apple stores getting raided by thugs who steal all the devices. We all know those devices will shut down and be inoperable but they don't know and/or care.
Are you aware of any law enforcement agencies that would risk loss of life for material objects? Even in the case of harm prevention, it's a failure if the perp dies. That's still seen as a policy or op failure.
Random passerby are not law enforcement professionals, they're untrained and therefore can't be held to such standards.
The case of Daniel Penny cited above is straightforward: "Neely boarded the car Penny was riding and reportedly began threatening passengers. After the train had left the station, Penny approached Neely from behind to apply the chokehold, and maintained it in a sitting position until Neely went limp a few minutes after the train had reached the next stop."
That's exactly what a successfully stopped threat looks like. That the threatening person ended up dying is unfortunate, but they did ultimately bring that upon themselves. They were free to stop being a threat to others at any time.
But then I don't know what you're trying to imply with the loss of life to protect material objects comment. Seems like an attempt to troll, because nobody is talking about that.
> But then I don't know what you're trying to imply with the loss of life to protect material objects comment. Seems like an attempt to troll, because nobody is talking about that.
From the thread (edited for clarity):
-> I've seen a phone jacking in this exact scenario and nobody moved to stop the guy running. Nobody on the train can help cause the doors have closed, and nobody on the platform has any idea anything just happened, or if they do the guy is well gone before they can put two and two together.
-> I'm not worried about the laptop. Pretty much everyone knows that any valuable laptop is a tracking device anyway. You should be worried about getting actually robbed, or even being attacked for no reason, while you're not paying attention.
-> Are you looking for examples? Off the cuff, in the past 2 years we've had 2 high-profile incidents: Jordan Williams and Daniel Penny.
Theft -> examples of loss of life during "successful interventions".
> That's exactly what a successfully stopped threat looks like.
We might be getting caught up on how to define successful here. If by successful you mean that the outcome was legal then I agree, and would say the outcomes of these trials were likely the appropriate outcome.
But if by successful you mean the best outcome, which is what I take it to mean, then I disagree. A successful intervention would be one where no-one was injured. I've spent years riding trains in Chicago where there's a pretty regular cohort of individuals suffering from various mental illness. I even lived in a building that partially served as a half-way house for such individuals. I've seen people do what Jordan Neely was claimed to do a couple dozen times without altercation. I've also seen people assaulted and knifes get pulled. There are ways to de-escalate a situation that doesn't result in a lethal outcome. That should be the definition of successful here.
> Random passerby are not law enforcement professionals, they're untrained and therefore can't be held to such standards.
The standard is the law. Vigilantism doesn't get a pass on the law just because it was good natured. Perhaps the law gives good natured people caution, but the alternative is much worse. "Legal hell" as it was put, is appropriate when involved in the death of an individual. That's just a consequence of living in a society that values human life.
I also code on the subway from time to time and this does occur to me. But there are locations in an NYC subway car you can sit that would make it very difficult for someone to grab your laptop and exit the train before the doors close. It's still a risk but it's not uncommon to see people with all kinds of valuable items (e.g. shopping bags from premium fashion stores) out in the open on the subway.
Crazy to think back to 2007 when iPhone users were advised to buy black earphones so the white ones wouldn't give them away as targets for theft. How far we've come/how commoditized our electronics have become.
I wonder what you could usefully do with a Kensington lock on the train. I bought one for use in cafés although I haven't used it most of the time.
You could attach it to something bulkier or something that you could put under the seat, maybe. I don't remember if New York subway seats have an exposed bar underneath that you could lock it to. I'm sure locking it to the vertical poles in the center of the car would be extremely antisocial.
Wear it like a belt while attaching it to the laptop (If you don't mind looking a bit ridiculous).
Although I'd highly recommend putting some cloth around it, or fitting it through the belt loops of jeans/trousers to soften the inevitable 'yank' when it comes.
Just my opinion, but I feel Kensington locks have little value.
Sure, maybe it will deface the stolen item when it gets ripped off, but for a thief, the device is still usable, and it can be sold for parts or at a discount. We are talking about the sorts of people that steal bicycle wheels and seats.
Their utility is in keeping honest people honest. For example, keeping office workers or customers from just walking off with or moving assets.
Here we're literally talking about protecting the device while the user is actively using it! Just preventing someone from grabbing it by hand for 5 seconds is a huge win.
The lock and lock attachment are supposedly rated for several hundred pounds of force. There are probably people who can break it by hand (especially if they practice applying the force at just the right angle or something) but a casual "grab and run" is not going to do it.
This is why I always used a clunker on the tube - early 2000s, you’d find me with a mid 90s monochrome Toshiba 386 laptop, cranking out code in vim - one handed, because the other hand supported the laptop - there are rarely seats on the tube.
Anyway. A) it was ancient and worthless and B) if anyone tried anything it was heavy enough it could do serious damage.
On my phone, I have a faceid requirement on basically any app, so getting it ripped off my hands would be just a minor inconvenience.
Laptop on the other hand...
Many times working on the train i've been thinking about some accelerometer based emergency lockdown. Can't be that hard to do.
True, but a laptop is much more of a hassle to quickly grab and run with than a phone.
What also helps is having one that's full of stickers or overall looks fairly (ab)used. A pristine MacBook is going to be much more of a target than a random ThinkPad with a sticker, greasy keyboard and 20 scratches.
Depends on where and when you are. Some hyped up dude is fixated on the next fix and lacks the executive function to discriminate. The more professional thieves are more discriminating.
There’s probably no market for it, but it might be interesting to make a MacBook case/cover and/or stickers that make it look old, cracked, scratched, and dirty.
It would be interesting to see if that would deter a thief.
What I miss about my long commutes on public transportation in early 2000’s was the serenity of doing absolutely nothing.
It was essentially forced meditation, and it helped me a lot in reorganizing my thoughts.
I had moved next to the office later, and noticed that I’d really missed those meditative hours. I saved maybe 1.5 hours of commute every day but my net productivity had declined.
I don’t think it would be as easy to achieve the same effect today as it was back then. We now have phones and interactive ads, and that dopamine driven economy.
For quite meditation types, perhaps, but mindfulness meditation, for example, doesn't require stripping away nuisance, but acknowledging it while keeping a mindful state instead.
About 20 years ago, I landed my first real, high-impact job at an upstart consulting agency in Washington DC that came from the ashes of the Howard Dean campaign. Unfortunately, I had also just signed a lease on an apartment in the town I lived in, a two hour drive from downtown DC.
I spent the first year at that job commuting into DC 2-3 days/week, which involved about an hour drive, then an hour regional commuter train, then some Metro transfer and walking — then back again in the evening. I spent that train time offline (as it was 2004) learning the Apple Cocoa frameworks, as in another twist of fate, the company was entirely Apple laptop-based, which was fairly rare for 2004, and I built tools for the team and myself. The focus possible because I was offline, with comprehensive docs, was pretty intense and was a huge part of many aspects of my career to follow.
Something a bit like that is part of how I got the Lisp Hacker merit badge.
I wanted a Lisp to be my new platform language for rapid systems research. And I had to spend most of each day on my laptop, from cafes and parks around town, with very little Internet access.
So I got all the docs locally, and I kludged up Emacs as a power-efficient "IDE" (including avoiding having to run a bloated Web browser), to help keep the hard drive spun down and CPU slowed.
Then I simply did a lot of programming, without distractions like open plan offices and pointless meetings. Even though I might be sitting against a tree in a busy park, and then have to move to a noisy cafe to recharge battery. Still so much less distracting and less stressful than an open plan office.
Sounds like an incredible period. Do you miss it at all?
I’ve had phases of my life where I was lucky to have periods of absolute and undisturbed focus (grad school, summers during college, etc.). It’s easy to forget how valuable that type of focus time is until it goes away!
Oh sure, lots of things to miss about that time... startup vibes, underdog causes during the worst of the Bush years, and work that ranged from the Mac stuff to Linux/BSD backend admin, PHP dev, introduction of the tech team to SVN/version control, even some music composition for a video. And close work with a bunch of folks on the team who now have their own Wikipedia pages, as well as high-profile clients. My boss left eventually in mid 2005 to go work for (then Senator) Obama and personally interviewed him for / produced his podcast, posted to his Flickr, and that sort of thing.
The commuting... not so much. Moved into DC proper after that year, which itself was a great adventure. Leaving the house at 5:30-6:00am and returning at 8:30-9:00pm was no way to live.
I usually make do with `man` pages for C (very comprehensive), and the `python-docs` package in my distro (you can download a static copy of the python documentation, and even the search will work offline). As well as whatever PDF manuals I need for what I'm doing.
As I use Gentoo I also usually have the source code for anything on my system, so I can dig into that if I'm missing some docs, as there's frequently a docs/ folder in the archive.
If I'm missing documentation, I make a note of it and see if there's a way to make it available locally, somehow.
When I was part of a team developing a highly durable texting protocol, those of us in NYC would regularly test messaging while riding the subway. Between stations, you didn't have network access but different devices upon entering the next station would handle and recover from the interruptions in various ways.
The subway produced so many repeatable network connection edge case problems. It was fantastic.
I used to commute 1h40m one way, which accounted for 50mins in a train (+10min avg waiting). While I ususally did pull out my laptop, the productivity just wasn't there - I can't consistently work while groggy/vitamin-d deficient during winter mornings, or in the evening being cooked after having worked for 8 hours (I have an office job, but not programming). The seats are cramped and uncomfortable, not being able to raise my arms enough to use the keyboard without bothering the passanger next to me, so I'd have to put it away during the crowded parts of the ride, and I'd be very frustrated if the train was unusually crowded. Having your "flow" be broken by arriving at the end stop and having to rush to pack your things is awful. The only conversation someone's struck up with me was a guy who insisted he'd never understand what I was doing even if he tried.
Suffice to say, after almost two years of this, I was extremely tired and sleep deprived as this ate away at my available time more than what is reasonable. Using the time for personal projects didn't compensate for it. Never again, it's really not worth it.
Started a comment to write basically what you said. I've been commuting like that for five years. At the end I didn't bother trying anything productive anymore.
Losing 2-3h per day commuting is not something I am gone miss anytime soon.
I used to do work on Caltrain, which used to be like 3 hours of my commute and didn't have any internet, so I would carefully plan what I could do beforehand. My code deploys to a machine that's very different from my laptop, but I had a Docker container set up to cross compile things and loaded up the docs beforehand, so as long as I planned out what I wanted to do.
These days Caltrain is faster and has occasionally frustrating, but fairly good Wi-Fi, so now my constraints are that I don't have a large monitor but not really much else.
I take the non-express in the morning and express in the evening, which used to be 105 and 60 minutes respectively prior to electrification. Nowadays it's 75 and 60 which is a little more reasonable. I could in theory take the last express in the morning but I think trying to squeeze in on a packed train that I have to wake up early for isn't really worth it over being able to leave the house at 10 and being guaranteed a table.
Doing connected work from the subway has gotten much, much easier in the last few years. I attribute that to three things:
1. Cell service has become low-latency. This is very different from "fast", which it has also become! When I started working from the train (on HSPA+), pings in the hundreds of milliseconds were the norm. My first step was usually to SSH to a remote machine, and let just the text lag on me. Nowadays, I can run a Web browser locally without issue.
2. Cell service has, at the same time, become ubiquitous in subway tunnels. When I started, there were some areas that dropped down to EDGE (unusable), and some areas that had no service at all. Now, there is exactly one place on the Boston transit system - Back Bay Station - where I lose cell service.
3. Noise cancelling tech has gotten better. It's not just about noise cancelling headphones: both of my laptops (a 2024 MBP and a ThinkPad P14s) have microphones that can filter out screeching wheels and noisy teenagers quite well. That means I can take meetings without making them miserable for the people on the other end.
These, honestly, are a huge game-changer for me. The ability to take a 30 minute meeting while commuting, where otherwise I would've had to get in early or stay late at work, actually does wonders for my ability to have a life outside of work.
> 2. Cell service has, at the same time, become ubiquitous in subway tunnels.
Not in New York, unfortunately. All of the stations have cell service, and one tunnel (14th Street L train tunnel under the East River), but everywhere else has no service between stations. It’s an annoying limitation that most cities seem to have fixed by now.
Late 90’s I had a ~90 minute commute for a while (50min train with seat, 20min London Underground seat mostly, 15min train crammed, 10min walk).
The longer train I would use my laptop, same with the 20min underground section on the journey in (going home no chance), but for the packed train and the walk I listened to music (I still have my Diamond Rio PMP300, no idea if it still works, just remember downsampling music to 32kbps to get more on a memory card, quality was less important than quantity - I must have listened to David Gray’s album _White Ladder_ many hundreds of times).
Toshiba laptops (Satellite? I think they were before the Tecras), heavy and the battery life wasn’t much more than 90 minutes but it was just enough. Dual booting Windows and Linux. (Linux for dev work on the go…)
Obviously no mobile connectivity back then, I had to have a plan for what I was going to work on and that also involved backup plans if I ran into a blocker on the primary. Same for the way home.
A bit later I could get GPRS data rates via Infra-Red to my mobile and that just felt like magic.
I found the times I couldn’t be on my laptop (walking or on the packed train) were great for thinking problems through and often had to stop to scribble down thoughts/ideas/solutions in a notebook that I kept in the laptop bag.
Wrote so much useful code in that 18 months without the distractions of the Internet or emails or whatever.
Now I somehow find I have less time despite having virtually no commute. Technology has vastly increased the number of distractions and I have let myself succumb to them. Where I had no real choice in what music I listened to now I have too much choice. There’s always one last thing to check before I get on with a bit of work. Sometimes I wish for simpler times.
I program and did program anywhere; unlike OP, I thrive in (human) noise: if it's quiet, I cannot focus, so working at home with multi monitor setups etc works against me (music doesn't help: not random enough and I cannot talk to people when I feel the need). I prefer subways, busses, airplanes, lounges, coffeeshops, pubs etc. Offices strangely do not work as I already know those people so I get bored and creativity plummets. My setup now is the best I had ever: a rugged android tablet with week-long battery, running termux with full desktop linux (not rooted) which can run all I want. I run several llms offline on it as well to fix the workflow when I don't have my nice foldable full keyboard out (if no space). I can run everything in our framework, online and offline; when I come back online, I just sync (code AND data) and voila.
Proponents of public transportation often say how they love to be able to use it as peaceful downtime to read, work, meditate, etc.
All my experience with public transportation is having to roll the dice and more often than not losing - having to stand while packed liked sardines into a bus or subway.
I used to get so much done on my BART commute. Also learned piano on a little 25 key midi keyboard until the program I was learning from started needing a 26th key.
I used an Akai LPK25 with my iPhone (using the Camera Connection Kit and a combined usb hub/dac) and an app called Simply Piano. They make a wireless version of that now that would simplify the setup a great deal. It is a mini keyboard and the keys are quite small, but in my experience it was fine for the beginner stuff (and the keyboard is useful in general later). As I said before, I stuck with this until the app started using keys outside the range I had.
Now, as for "did I proceed with more serious learning" - I alternate though a ton of hobbies. So I moved on after that, though still go back to it from time to time. But I also have other musical interests and it was helpful to those as well.
Also did a lot of music on the commute on my iPhone with Korg Gadget (and Caustic before that). Sometimes with a keyboard, sometimes without.
I recently bought a GPD MicroPC 2, a 7” laptop with a real keyboard. It runs Linux just fine, and it has been a fun experience of having a “real” computer with me much more often than I otherwise would. My version of programming on the subway has been programming on a park bench—it fits in a jacket pocket, or even the back pocket of some of my pants. The keyboard is tiny but easy enough to use with thumbs, or, with some practice, two-handed touch typing on a flat surface.
It’s nice to be less tethered to a desk, while also not having to carry a backpack and heavier full laptop, but still able to remote in and do what I need to do. I really enjoy having a fully capable Linux PC in my pocket vs a smartphone.
It's surprisingly good! I wouldn't want to type on it all day long, but it works pretty well for me. I just did a cold typing test, not having typed on it in a few days, and got 55wpm touch typing the normal way, and 40wpm with thumbs. On a regular keyboard I can type >100wpm, so it's clearly not quite there, but I much prefer it to a smartphone keyboard, and I can be much more accurate on it without any sort of autocorrect.
Another GPD MicroPC owner here. It’s not quite as comfortable as a normal-sized keyboard, but much more comfortable than it looks. It’s quite decent for occasional recreational programming, and I’ve also used it to write daily blog posts from a long-distance cycling trip.
My entire stack is meant to let me work offline in random locations. Until recently it was meant to run smoothly on a 12" Macbook. The output is also made for users on spotty internet connections. This comes from years of working while travelling. I can work offline for weeks if needed.
I sometimes do "iPad work", which is essentially researching, reviewing and annotating content on my iPad Mini. I will hop on my bike and work an hour or two in different locations, over coffee or in the sun. It's a relaxing break from working on a computer at a desk.
I do think that people should work in different places. Perhaps we'd have apps that work better on slow internet.
IIRC there are some actual studies that say changing your physical location will actually affect your performance.
In my previous $dayjob I was That Guy who was getting pinged on chats and emails and people dropped in for "just a quick question". When I had to get work done on a deadline, I went to a cafe down the street, turned off the chats, got a massive bucket of coffee, put on my noise cancelling headphones and just ... worked. Later when the office got bigger (multiple stories in the same building), I "hid" on a couch at a complete different department for the same purpose.
That was almost 10 years ago and still my brain connects couches and cafes as deep work places :D
This is essentially how I work on hobby projects these days. My bus commute is about 45 minutes each way and I find this to be just enough time to get work done. I also try not to work on these projects outside of my commuting hours; this gives me time to mull problems over rather than jumping headlong into writing code.
The lack of internet on the bus has not really been a problem since I plan ahead and make sure any dependencies I need are already downloaded.
I use an old (2010 era) Toshiba netbook which is small enough that I'm not causing problems for my seat neighbours. It's also only got a dual-core 1GHz processor which kind of forces me to find performant solutions to problems.
Much like the author I've also been thinking about how I can make my setup more portable. I've been considering purchasing AR glasses and using my Charachorder2 so I don't even need to get the netbook out of my bag. At this stage I can't justify the cost of a pair of AR glasses though.
Some recent projects my commute has given me the time to work on:
Sadly, only the text editor is on public source control at the moment (https://github.com/jpsheehan/ocaml-edit). The game project and operating system are ongoing until I get bored of them and move on to something else. Most of my obsessions over the last few years have been bus projects. My Tetris clone is another example (C, SDL): https://github.com/jpsheehan/tetris
Did this for a couple years on a 45 minute CTA commute in Chicago while I was learning to code outside my day job, it honestly made that commute not even feel burdensome. Key was that I was 1.) on the brown line, which was still running the 3200-series cars with plentiful seats, and 2.) at an early enough stop to reliably get one. And can confirm an old Thinkpad (x220 at the time) is the king of commute coding.
When I used to ride Caltrain to/from work, I would often have an uninterrupted stretch of 45+ minutes in a cozy single seat (I would always take an upper deck seat in the "gallery" car) to either doze off or use this time to focus on something. I would get so much done on those days if I managed to avoid the sun blasting too much sunlight on my screen/seat. This commuter rail experience is probably familiar to many of us, but it's specific to commuter rail - being a passenger on a subway or in a car/bus is too chaotic or bumpy to do this.
More generally, I find that switching up your surroundings is absolutely vital for your brain's ability to focus on hard tasks. I will hit a wall if I try to work multiple 10+ hour days sitting in one spot, but a comfortable spot in a different coffee shop or lounge can totally trick my brain into powering through.
> This commuter rail experience is probably familiar to many of us, but it's specific to commuter rail - being a passenger on a subway or in a car/bus is too chaotic or bumpy to do this.
I second this. It is hard for me to do anything productive on a bus because the stop/start frequency is too high and more physically demanding than a train.
I wrote nearly all of https://apps.apple.com/us/app/two-birds-one-stone/id15396463... on a train without internet. It was about a half hour journey, and I found that in such a short amount of time, I would set a small goal and work in a very distraction free way to achieve it. It was very good for doing small things, but sometimes doing larger things (like big refactors) is a bit more difficult. On occasion, I would also dedicate a train ride to just writing up a todo list.
I gave myself the rule of no internet while on the train, so sometimes I would just accumulate a list of questions I wanted to answer later.
There is definitely something to it, and you can get heaps done, but it needs to be supported with some non-train time (e.g. for me, it was all the app store stuff, debugging with real hardware, etc)
Working on the metro makes a boring commute fly by - blink and you are at your destination already. 30 minutes each way is 1 hour a day. Over the entire year it's 250+ hours or 9 whole 16-hour days.
That's why whenever I move to a new city, I typically look to live somewhere that's at the end of the metro line. It meant in the morning commute I can _always_ get a seat.
That was one of the reasons I liked living in Hammersmith when I worked in Shoreditch/Old Street - it's at the end of the Hammersmith and City Line and I don't have to change lines. There's also the add bonus that the line is above ground until Paddington which meant I have more than enough time to load up any tabs I need to use before the Internet blackout.
In Hong Kong I worked at Central and lived in Tsuen Wan. Literally from one end of the line to the other. This had the added bonus that I was also guaranteed a seat on the way home as well.
17 years ago I went to a summer vacation with my family (still a teenager). That meant 10 days without any internet connectivity. I just got my first laptop and I was allowed to take it with me. I was reverse engineering MSN Messenger's user to user and profile picture exchange protocol from TCP dumps. MSN Messenger did not use any encryption. Before I went to the vacation I recorded a bunch of sessions with Wireshark (maybe it was still Ethereal back then). Then for 10 days I was just trying to figure out from the dumps how the binary protocol worked and was writing the code without any way to test it. When I came back I just had to fix some minor bugs and it worked. Fun times.
I was in Philadelphia for a week and also used my commute time (2 hours in total each day) to program. As a web developer who uses Github Copilot and often checks documentation online, I did not have such a good experience as OP had. Mobile data is pretty much nonexistent in Philadelphia in the subway and there are also no wifi Hotspots.
Sure, it was better than nothing, but I would quite often find myself waiting for the subway to arrive at stations and hoping that there is at least some internet connectivity there.
Laptops sometimes have stickers. For a time, I instead had a transparent slip cover, to vary the sticker set, user-test alternatives, and throttle conversations. Science education topics (Boston/Cambridge subway). Anti-patriarchy stickers drew proto-MAGAs. Some backpacks now have low-res screens built into the back, suggesting new possibilities.
One Laptop Per Child, at its peak, generated fun continuous crowd conversations.
> a pair of glasses with a screen inside of them
I've no idea what current tech is like, but I use to proselytize aphysical UIs, where a small head motion results in larger screen motion, to reduce neck swiveling.[1]
> weirder
Laptop harness walking desks are a thing. And one can do hand and head tracking[2] (I had that setup at a meetup where the swag was little stick-on privacy shutters for laptop webcams :). Boston/Cambridge is perhaps culturally a best case for such games - I've not tried them in NYC... hmm.
> but something very complex, [...] instead sketch out a diagram on a piece of paper [...] keep a small notebook in my bag
Same. I've tried swapping in an iPad, but it hasn't stuck.
I’ve done this before, but you need a relatively long subway ride without any transfers. IMO, 30 minutes is just barely at the edge of being worthwhile, and only if you can get a seat right when you get on, and only if the seat isn’t so cramped that it’s actually possible to get your laptop out of your bag. This happens rarely.
But on longer trips from e.g. upper Manhattan to deep Brooklyn, particularly at off-peak hours when I have room to spread out—yeah, I’ve had some very productive sessions.
I've done it a few times on city busses which I'd say are worse than subway. Less legroom, bumpier ride, more people passing by. My 13" laptop barely fit.
It's not something I'd want to do on the daily but if you really need to get something done and are running out of time (those busses get stuck in traffic for half an hour or more), it's doable.
Ever since moving to Germany, one of my favourite treats has been to jump on a train out to the countryside, program on the train, and then go for a hike, do some more programming during lunch, and then program on the train on my way home.
It's often less productive than a normal workday so i dont do it super often, but It's very enjoyable, and the change of scenery sometimes helps me get unstuck on problems.
Coding on metros, trains, buses and planes is exactly the reason I always make sure my dev environments work 100% offline, with dummy services in place of the real ones.
One thing I love about coding on public transport is the sense of urgency can be fun.
Being on the verge of figuring out a bugfix or whatever when you know train is pulling into the station and you have maybe a minute to go, cracking it, quick test, bundle the laptop quickly back into your bag as you step off the train is quite a nice feeling.
A couple of weeks ago I was in Copenhagen, and had to take the metro back and forth a bunch of times throughout the day. I noticed some guy riding the "Cityringen" line, which goes in a loop, working on his laptop - coding in some CLI editor. Noticed the same guy a couple of times throughout the day, sitting in the same spot.
I decided to cut an hour out of my in-the-office time recently, figuring that I'm sitting on the bus for any hour anyway, so I might as well use that time to knock some work out instead. Tethering is pretty good other than a predictable problem spot or two.
Much better experience than working on a plane. I've done a handful of cross-US flights this year on Alaska Airlines, and trying to do anything network-related on those flights was torture. Super spotty, high latencies, constant timeouts; very frustrating.
Not paying attention on the train, even in 2025 girliepop-influencer-Instragram-latte-art New York, is not the smartest. You're probably better off during rush hour, but being aware of your surroundings is never a bad idea, even in "safe" New York.
I use these same tripods with magsafe stickers (to be used next on my newer Glove80 with Pro Reds). It works well. I also use them atop somewhat taller mini tripods for other ergonomic situations, or with clamps attached to my chair. It's very quick to move the keyboard halves around and use during travel where desks will not be at ergonomic heights.
Very curious what other tripods you’ve found suitable for this purpose. At my own workstation, I use a pair of adhesive dashboard mounts, which allows me to achieve some pretty extreme tenting (see https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/1p1q5xz/), but while out and about, I worry that such light boards would get jostled around on a desk/table if tented as hard as I usually do.
I use two of these: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B077JX7GBL?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_d... it lets me tent at nearly 90 deg which is great. And it is also good for reclining on my LC4, where I use two Perriand berger stools as armrests and a Levo laptop stand.
For something sturdier I use Ulanzi super clamps with extensions.
The Glove80 (which is fantastic, as a 15 year Kinesis Aadvantage user prior) also has a tripod mounting kit which I haven't tried yet.
Sure. The Nebula tripod is also tall enough to be just high enough to use while sitting on typical chairs, if you're ok with somewhat low keyboards / have long arms. It's a great at both lower and mid-range heights which makes it quite versatile as a portable tripod, aside from desktop use (although it would also be useful with "standing desk" laptop risers that go on top of other surfaces). It helps to rotate the tripod legs appropriately for stability when tented.
I used to do this as I commuted on the train between school and my hometown in the early 2010s. As a way to learn and pass the time.
No access to internet so mostly hacking from memory. I could use man pages for C, but Haskell was a bit more tricky.
Sometimes I’d just end up sketching things out on paper, but eventually I could complete entire modules without looking anything up. Was always a bummer to be stuck on something that I knew could be answered online in mere seconds. Good times.
"On the subway, I'm missing a lot of my normal setup [...] I don't even have an internet connection"
There is no cellular data in the NYC subway? I had to look it up online and apparently there is but coverage is quite patchy. That's very surprising to learn, NYC being one of the most developped and richest cities in the world. By comparison, and from my experience, the Parisian metro has excellent coverage.
I switched from a 1h30 of commute by bus to 15 minutes by car a while back ; then I switched jobs and now have 1h total commute. It's kind of annoying that I can't do anything of substance during this time because I'm driving. I used to read on the bus and while I don't miss the bus, I certainly miss the reading.
I used to program on the Boston T. I had my little MSI Wind netbook and I coded a game on my commutes to and from work. I eventually ported that game to Android.
I love to program on my commute. When I took NJ Transit bus, when I took NY Ferry, when I took MetroNorth.
But I’ve never felt comfortable opening a laptop on the NYC subway. It wasn’t about the safety that OP describes. It was about the culture and the physical configuration (facing middle with strap hangers vs facing front/back). It just didn’t feel right in the subway.
I do miss the MetroNorth Bar Car! I could drink and code and it was jovial.
I once had an 1.75 hour commute each way, 3.5 hours daily. I had to program during the commute---otherwise there weren't enough hours in the day to get my work done. There were periods of laptop-closed thinking, but no daydreaming or looking at the scenery. No Internet connectivity, so I had to plan carefully.
I've done this! https://a.co/d/80C2EQ5 is the harness I use for it. It's main problem is you look like a total dork, but picking up potential partners on the subway is a faux pas anyway, so that's less of an issue, but still.
I have always enjoyed it. I have even gotten comments "can you really do anything in such a short period of time" but i have found that even 20 min sessions on a commute can be effective. For a major project I did the final push on such a commute just hoping the push could complete before the train reached the tunnel without coverage, and it did
Reminds me of this metafilter thread [0] where people asked/shared less usual work locations. Hotel lobbies are a great one, as have laundromats sometimes been in the past.
An intercity train with wifi/cell service (and tea!) is an incredible focussing function as well. You got 3 hours and a beautiful not too distracting view. Go!
P.s. I also suggested to Stephen that he gets a Nathan Fielder “laptop harness” for his subway work..? Has anyone tried this?
Louis Rrossmann[0] had a massive tirade against Macbooks over a decade ago because they didn't have a battery hump in the back.
Why you ask?
I'll tell you. He edited videos on the NY subway using his Lenovo(?) laptop with a massive extra battery hump in the back, which he used as a handle to hold on to with one hand while he typed with the other.
Years ago I was part of a cross-disciplinary group doing game development.
After our standup in the morning, the graphics artists would have made tons of drawings on the paper table cloth. If they had access to a pen and paper, they would be drawing.
I used to regularly do work on my laptop on the subway, and then the PATH, after I moved to NJ. You don't see a whole lot of people doing it but it's very doable. I tether to get online via my phone.
I don't understand how this is possible. I've heard the New York Subway system is riddled with antisocial behaviour, homeless, drunks, people pissing everywhere, etc.
Not often, and not recommended, but I have coded on the cockpit table while single-handing a sailboat. Interrupting a conference call with “sorry, one moment, I have to tack out of the fleet” is its own special joy.
Does anyone make a mobile cursor that can be remotely controlled? Like, I can keep tapping (tab, tab, tab), and it will automatically switch and zoom to the next window.
I developed a big chunk of my Scumm games decompiler in London's central line. I was lucky (or unlucky) enough to go far enough each day to always hand an empty seat and enjoy 30 minutes of me time each way.
All on a Chromebook with crostini. Cheap, long battery life and decent keyboard.
My experience of the central line couldn't have been more different - commuting between Bethnal Green and Holborn, often having to wait 20-25 mins on the platform, letting a dozen trains go by before finally managing to squeeze on, followed by 9 minutes crouching under someone's armpit.
No chance of reading my phone or Kindle, let alone using a laptop!
Eh. My preferred subway activity is to listen to music and stare at the ground. I don't know... do I really need to stare at my computer screen every waking moment?
I've done a lot of programming in public transport. It helps to shut out the environment with blasting black metal, pick an album that is almost entirely screaming tremolos, and then run a script with a sleep or Process.send_after or something that throws up send-notify bubbles when it's about time to pack up.
With coding agents AI almost never manually type code anymore. It would be great to have a code editor that runs on my phone so I can do voice prompts and let the coding agents type stuff for me.
I have been doing this with GitHub's copilot agent web interface on my phone; word-vomit voice prompt + instructions to always run the tests or take screenshots so I can evaluate the change works really well.
Here is a description of the daily commute by Michael Milken, 1980s junk bond king, as told in "Predator's Ball" by Connie Bruck:
At 5:30am each weekday in the early 1970s, a bus pulled up to a stop in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and a young man lugging a bag that bulged with papers mounted its steps. He was making the two-hour commute to New York City, where he worked at the investment banking firm of Drexel Firestone. The train would have provided a more comfortable and faster ride; but, for those very reasons, it also offered more opportunity to meet other Wall Street acquaintances. They would want to engage in the kind of idle small talk that commuters share to pass the time. The thought must have been intolerable. He did not wish to be rude, but he wanted no interruption.
As soon as he had settled into his seat, being sure to take one with an empty one adjacent, he unloaded a mountain of prospectuses and 10ks (annual Securities and Exchange Commission filings) onto the seat next to him. On winter mornings the sky was still pitch black and the light on the bus was too dim for him to be able to read. He wore a leather aviation cap with the earflaps down; he had been bald for years, and although he wore a toupee his head always felt cold on these frosty mornings. Now over his aviation cap he fitted a miner's headlamp -- strapped around the back of his head, with a huge light projecting from his forehead.
This is dedication.
Unfortunately I can't program on a bus, I get motion sickness. Subway works very well though! It insulates me from most distractions. The only problem is that the longest subway commute I ever had was about 45 minutes; solid 2 hours would allow for so much more! :)
A buddy of mine had the same thing. He started taking the light rail into downtown and purposefully parked at one of the early stops instead of taking the bus in. He said he would sit and code on his side projects for around the same amount of time. In the span of a year, he knocked out several small mobile apps and several social media plugins.
He said the benefit was being able to spend more time with his family at night when he got home. He knew he would have some time on the train, so not having to crack his laptop to get in some coding after dinner allowed him to spend a lot more time handling the kids and spending time with his wife.
"Work/Life balance achieved!" he used to proclaim with a big smile when we'd sit and chat.
My commute to work is quite long but there is no "sitting" in Tokyo's trains in mornings/evenings so I program on a smartphone. Yes, it's not impossible but it takes time to get used to it.
Would you mind sharing a bit more about how you make it work? Do you have an app? or are you just using the notepad on your phone?
have you ever considered a nanote from donki? I've been using one as a paired terminal and with the right os (debian, no GUI) it stays cool enough and gets good battery, same with the gpd handhelds
I would go for some affordable AR glasses + a one-hand chord keyboard. No need to hold a device in one hand and operate it with another, while standing awkwardly bent down.
I generally just thumb-type on it with the hinge bent at 180°. I have a colleauge who tried the meta AR glasses and found the display smudgey with his 20/20 vision and my quest 3 I found very screen door-y, though I will admit I liked the apple vision pro's display, I have a fair bit of pessimism about the field as a whole atm, but would like to be proven wrong
[flagged]
Why would you ever think this an acceptable thing to say?
I’ve recently learned to downvote/flag and not respond to green names. The number of new accounts coming in hot with inflammatory takes lately has seemed higher to me, but admittedly this is purely a “vibe,” I have no numbers to back it up.
Anyway, I just flag/downvote and move on.
TIL that the green color means the account is new. I always thought it was a special marker somehow, like the equivalent of a blue checkmark.
Yeah I used to think it was the thread OP or an admin or something myself.
[dead]
[flagged]
When I was living in Paris I had a 20 min ride from home to work each day. I picked up the habit to read during those 40 total minutes and I was going through books like I had never been able to, because while 40 min is not a lot, it’s about 150h per year. One easily underestimates the power of consistency.
I read many books a year by reading for 20-30 minutes per night before sleeping. A habit with multiple benefits (winding down and reading or commuting and reading) is very powerful for getting the most value out of your time.
Until the book gets really good and you have to keep reading past your bedtime to learn what happens (or maybe that's just me)
It's not just you, I hear this often, but I am always suprised people can read for so long in bed. No matter how interesting a book is, I can rarely read more than 20-30 minutes before the urge to fall asleep becomes too strong.
But I can sometimes code until like 4AM. Weird.
Reading is usually more passive than coding. I'm often never sleepy if I'm actively coding something late at night but reading a book (no matter how engaging) or watching a tv show can very easily make me sleepy. That said, everyone's brains work very differently.
This is just so weird. In general coding won't let me fall asleep but a book 100% will never let me sleep until I finish.
I also find the idea of "forcing" yourself to read rather peculiar, but we're all different people. I wonder if there's genuinely something different in how the brain reacts.
Well you are sitting in front of a relatively bright lamp when coding.
This happens to me about once a year. I’m much more likely to stay up later than planned while doing other activities such as watching tv, coding, talking, social media, or spending time with my partner.
Anything true crime keeps me up. Same with many genre's like you said, but for some reason true crime always hooks me.
I read the Zodiac book by Robert Graysmith in less than two days over break in college. Could not put it down.
To offer a counterargument: I would strongly recommend aspiring and avid readers to not make reading in bed your primary / only mode of reading. It will make your brain associate books with sleep and thus make you turn drowsy the moment you have turned a few pages.
I stopped because I would feel sleepy and also feel like I didn’t get what I was reading and would forget the book. I suppose that’s something of a champagne problem.
I wore out the elbows of quite a few shirts lying on my side in bed reading. This was during the time I would go to the local science fiction bookstore every Saturday and buy three or four books, ocassionally finishing them by Monday.
I also used to read my commute but stopped it after I finished "for whom the bell tolls". I was so moved that I ended up crying in the bus and I would have liked to experience that feeling in the privacy of my home rather in the morning bus with 9 hours still on the clock.
I used to religiously read The New Yorker (magazine) on my commute. I remember crying while reading about the copper mine rescue in Chile.
I read the road by Cormac McCarthy on the train. That was a mistake.
I commute to the office 1-3 times a week, it's about 30 minutes on the train + some walking.
I've gone through so many books it's crazy :)
With audiobooks I can start listening the second I step out of the door and stop while I take my jacket off in the office. With e-books I usually just read on the train.
Most books aren't that long, around 5 hours a week of reading just during your commutes is quite a bit.
For one year I read every free moment averaged a book every 3 days mostly biographies many on wrestling. The year I got an e-reader (alura tech). Stopped after the screen broke.
The book that stood out the most. Sugar Barons.
I do the same with language learning. Makes me actually enjoy commuting to work since I find it hard to study at home. I just pop in the headphones, take a seat, and sit for 40 mins twice a day. Sometimes I even intentionally take the non-rapid so I can study a bit more (plus the train is less packed so I'm always guaranteed a seat)
how can you read in 20 minutes, for me 20 minutes is only good enough to stare out the windows and ... zip zip 20 minutes are gone
i need a couple of hours to do any technical reading
20 minutes, maybe, maybe .. good enough if i am reading fiction or something
> how can you read in 20 minutes
> good enough if i am reading fiction or something
Looks like you got there in the end.
Just do as you do when you are doing technical reading for a couple of hours, but stop after 20 minutes.
Many years ago, before mobile internet was reasonable and before wireless internet was available, and before even electrical outlets were something which could be counted on to be present on trains, I took a 6 hour train ride. I had no laptop. I printed out, on paper, the entire source code of the project I was working on, and brought a red pen. I read through the whole thing, from start to finish. Many subtle bug fixes, refactorings, and efficiency improvements were made that day.
Thats pretty rad! How many papers were you hauling!?
That’s actually pretty cool!
A few years ago, I spotted a guy on the underground in Warsaw, hacking on some code in a language I didn't recognize, but it was definitely assembly of some sort. Being shy, I resorted to throwing curious glimpses at his laptop for a few stations, but eventually curiosity got the better of me and I asked ‘sorry, is this ARM’? To which the guy replies, smiling, ‘ah no, it’s MIPS!’
Now I program casually in public spaces, including the underground, on my GPD Micro PC [0]. It, too, has attracted numerous glimpses and been a conversation starter on some occasions.
[0]: https://blog.danieljanus.pl/2022/08/18/i-love-my-gpd-micro-p...
that's a fun story! i program on the train often due to occasional long commute (hour one way), but I live in finland so people are much less likely to talk to me, a stranger on the train, out of blue. On couple occasions I wanted to talk to another coder on the train when I notice their laptop stickers (a gamejam sticker or a sticker saying that this laptop is property of company X) but felt too self-conscious to do that cause they looked very focused
> they would have to do it at a station, where they could immediately get off the train. I think, though, that this would be risky, given that subway stops generally have a lot of people getting on/off the train in the first place.
I've seen a phone jacking in this exact scenario and nobody moved to stop the guy running. Nobody on the train can help cause the doors have closed, and nobody on the platform has any idea anything just happened, or if they do the guy is well gone before they can put two and two together.
For me I always pocket my phone or e-reader at each stop, unless I'm in Japan or Taiwan.
Here's my experience with (attempted) theft on a train:
I once was on a MARC train at DC Union Station. Some train cars have electrical sockets, so I plugged in a bike light I had since I'd be taking a bike for the last part of the trip. The train hadn't left the station yet. I was standing near the seat with the socket. Some unassuming looking guy was walking through the train car, like probably 100 did before him, when he grabbed the light, unplugged it, and kept walking. I immediately confronted him (I was in his path) saying something like "What are you doing?" Without a word, he handed me the light and walked off the train. I found a conductor like 15 seconds later and they called security, who apparently detained the guy.
This guy was way more brazen about stealing something of little value than I had expected. I was standing near the seat and watching it! I guess he didn't expect me to be the owner.
He didn’t expect you to confront him before he was gone.
I'm a Japan resident... whenever I'm outside of Japan, friends have to remind me to not "leave my laptop out like that" nor hold wads of visible cash or keep my smartphone on the table.
Cafes... I'll go to the bathroom or whatever and just leave my stuff all out on the table, meanwhile with my high-end bicycle parked unlocked and out-of-view outside.
It, of course, isn't like this EVERYWHERE in Japan, but many many places.
I'm not worried about the laptop. Pretty much everyone knows that any valuable laptop is a tracking device anyway.
You should be worried about getting actually robbed, or even being attacked for no reason, while you're not paying attention.
Also, yes, nobody's going to help you. Some of it is because of general unawareness, as you point out. Then, it's difficult to know who's the aggressor. Even if that's all crystal clear, you're almost certainly going to deal with months or years of legal hell if you intervene. Successful interventions often lead to prosecutions.
>any valuable laptop is a tracking device anyway.
You say this but I've seen countless videos of Apple stores getting raided by thugs who steal all the devices. We all know those devices will shut down and be inoperable but they don't know and/or care.
What's the source for this "successful interventions often lead to prosecutions"?
Actual events. Are you looking for examples? Off the cuff, in the past 2 years we've had 2 high-profile incidents: Jordan Williams and Daniel Penny.
Successful interventions don't lead to death.
Right on. I see what kind of thread you're going for, so I'm out.
I mean why would you call that successful?
Are you aware of any law enforcement agencies that would risk loss of life for material objects? Even in the case of harm prevention, it's a failure if the perp dies. That's still seen as a policy or op failure.
Random passerby are not law enforcement professionals, they're untrained and therefore can't be held to such standards.
The case of Daniel Penny cited above is straightforward: "Neely boarded the car Penny was riding and reportedly began threatening passengers. After the train had left the station, Penny approached Neely from behind to apply the chokehold, and maintained it in a sitting position until Neely went limp a few minutes after the train had reached the next stop."
That's exactly what a successfully stopped threat looks like. That the threatening person ended up dying is unfortunate, but they did ultimately bring that upon themselves. They were free to stop being a threat to others at any time.
But then I don't know what you're trying to imply with the loss of life to protect material objects comment. Seems like an attempt to troll, because nobody is talking about that.
> But then I don't know what you're trying to imply with the loss of life to protect material objects comment. Seems like an attempt to troll, because nobody is talking about that.
From the thread (edited for clarity):
-> I've seen a phone jacking in this exact scenario and nobody moved to stop the guy running. Nobody on the train can help cause the doors have closed, and nobody on the platform has any idea anything just happened, or if they do the guy is well gone before they can put two and two together.
-> I'm not worried about the laptop. Pretty much everyone knows that any valuable laptop is a tracking device anyway. You should be worried about getting actually robbed, or even being attacked for no reason, while you're not paying attention.
-> Are you looking for examples? Off the cuff, in the past 2 years we've had 2 high-profile incidents: Jordan Williams and Daniel Penny.
Theft -> examples of loss of life during "successful interventions".
> That's exactly what a successfully stopped threat looks like.
We might be getting caught up on how to define successful here. If by successful you mean that the outcome was legal then I agree, and would say the outcomes of these trials were likely the appropriate outcome.
But if by successful you mean the best outcome, which is what I take it to mean, then I disagree. A successful intervention would be one where no-one was injured. I've spent years riding trains in Chicago where there's a pretty regular cohort of individuals suffering from various mental illness. I even lived in a building that partially served as a half-way house for such individuals. I've seen people do what Jordan Neely was claimed to do a couple dozen times without altercation. I've also seen people assaulted and knifes get pulled. There are ways to de-escalate a situation that doesn't result in a lethal outcome. That should be the definition of successful here.
> Random passerby are not law enforcement professionals, they're untrained and therefore can't be held to such standards.
The standard is the law. Vigilantism doesn't get a pass on the law just because it was good natured. Perhaps the law gives good natured people caution, but the alternative is much worse. "Legal hell" as it was put, is appropriate when involved in the death of an individual. That's just a consequence of living in a society that values human life.
I also code on the subway from time to time and this does occur to me. But there are locations in an NYC subway car you can sit that would make it very difficult for someone to grab your laptop and exit the train before the doors close. It's still a risk but it's not uncommon to see people with all kinds of valuable items (e.g. shopping bags from premium fashion stores) out in the open on the subway.
Crazy to think back to 2007 when iPhone users were advised to buy black earphones so the white ones wouldn't give them away as targets for theft. How far we've come/how commoditized our electronics have become.
A CS professor of mine had his laptop lifted on the train home right out of his lap. It does happen.
I wonder what you could usefully do with a Kensington lock on the train. I bought one for use in cafés although I haven't used it most of the time.
You could attach it to something bulkier or something that you could put under the seat, maybe. I don't remember if New York subway seats have an exposed bar underneath that you could lock it to. I'm sure locking it to the vertical poles in the center of the car would be extremely antisocial.
Wear it like a belt while attaching it to the laptop (If you don't mind looking a bit ridiculous).
Although I'd highly recommend putting some cloth around it, or fitting it through the belt loops of jeans/trousers to soften the inevitable 'yank' when it comes.
Just my opinion, but I feel Kensington locks have little value.
Sure, maybe it will deface the stolen item when it gets ripped off, but for a thief, the device is still usable, and it can be sold for parts or at a discount. We are talking about the sorts of people that steal bicycle wheels and seats.
Their utility is in keeping honest people honest. For example, keeping office workers or customers from just walking off with or moving assets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6wRhrWl_2M
Here we're literally talking about protecting the device while the user is actively using it! Just preventing someone from grabbing it by hand for 5 seconds is a huge win.
I mean, wouldn't it just result in the side of the laptop being ripped off?
The lock and lock attachment are supposedly rated for several hundred pounds of force. There are probably people who can break it by hand (especially if they practice applying the force at just the right angle or something) but a casual "grab and run" is not going to do it.
Must by highly device dependent. I've never seen a laptop that had more than some thin sheet metal as reinforcement for the lock slot.
Check the Youtube video in my comment above.
Huh, that's not so encouraging! :-(
This is why I always used a clunker on the tube - early 2000s, you’d find me with a mid 90s monochrome Toshiba 386 laptop, cranking out code in vim - one handed, because the other hand supported the laptop - there are rarely seats on the tube.
Anyway. A) it was ancient and worthless and B) if anyone tried anything it was heavy enough it could do serious damage.
On my phone, I have a faceid requirement on basically any app, so getting it ripped off my hands would be just a minor inconvenience.
Laptop on the other hand... Many times working on the train i've been thinking about some accelerometer based emergency lockdown. Can't be that hard to do.
There is software to shutdown/lock based on removal of a usb device that you have looped onto your wrist.
True, but a laptop is much more of a hassle to quickly grab and run with than a phone.
What also helps is having one that's full of stickers or overall looks fairly (ab)used. A pristine MacBook is going to be much more of a target than a random ThinkPad with a sticker, greasy keyboard and 20 scratches.
Depends on where and when you are. Some hyped up dude is fixated on the next fix and lacks the executive function to discriminate. The more professional thieves are more discriminating.
I agree that it’s just a matter of when it’s stolen, not if it’s going to be stolen.
The article suggests the laptop is about $300, and he uses it about 1hr/day.
If the laptop is stolen less than once a year he spends less than $1/hr for coding on the go, which I would consider a fair deal.
By “when” I mean time of day. If you’re heading somewhere in Brooklyn after 7pm, that’s different than heading to the city at 7am.
There’s probably no market for it, but it might be interesting to make a MacBook case/cover and/or stickers that make it look old, cracked, scratched, and dirty.
It would be interesting to see if that would deter a thief.
https://nuroco.com/products/mosiso-laptop-pu-case-for-new-ma...
Reminds me of the old SNL sketch: https://streamable.com/m7omz
What I miss about my long commutes on public transportation in early 2000’s was the serenity of doing absolutely nothing.
It was essentially forced meditation, and it helped me a lot in reorganizing my thoughts.
I had moved next to the office later, and noticed that I’d really missed those meditative hours. I saved maybe 1.5 hours of commute every day but my net productivity had declined.
I don’t think it would be as easy to achieve the same effect today as it was back then. We now have phones and interactive ads, and that dopamine driven economy.
I miss that about those times.
I go to the coffee shop without my phone and the freeing sensation is unreal
aren't such places too busy for meditation?
For quite meditation types, perhaps, but mindfulness meditation, for example, doesn't require stripping away nuisance, but acknowledging it while keeping a mindful state instead.
About 20 years ago, I landed my first real, high-impact job at an upstart consulting agency in Washington DC that came from the ashes of the Howard Dean campaign. Unfortunately, I had also just signed a lease on an apartment in the town I lived in, a two hour drive from downtown DC.
I spent the first year at that job commuting into DC 2-3 days/week, which involved about an hour drive, then an hour regional commuter train, then some Metro transfer and walking — then back again in the evening. I spent that train time offline (as it was 2004) learning the Apple Cocoa frameworks, as in another twist of fate, the company was entirely Apple laptop-based, which was fairly rare for 2004, and I built tools for the team and myself. The focus possible because I was offline, with comprehensive docs, was pretty intense and was a huge part of many aspects of my career to follow.
Something a bit like that is part of how I got the Lisp Hacker merit badge.
I wanted a Lisp to be my new platform language for rapid systems research. And I had to spend most of each day on my laptop, from cafes and parks around town, with very little Internet access.
So I got all the docs locally, and I kludged up Emacs as a power-efficient "IDE" (including avoiding having to run a bloated Web browser), to help keep the hard drive spun down and CPU slowed.
Then I simply did a lot of programming, without distractions like open plan offices and pointless meetings. Even though I might be sitting against a tree in a busy park, and then have to move to a noisy cafe to recharge battery. Still so much less distracting and less stressful than an open plan office.
Having started using emacs in the 80s, it’s strange to read about it being the power-efficient choice now.
I agree it was for you, but it had well-earned the “eight megabytes and constantly swapping” reputation 35 years ago.
Sounds like an incredible period. Do you miss it at all?
I’ve had phases of my life where I was lucky to have periods of absolute and undisturbed focus (grad school, summers during college, etc.). It’s easy to forget how valuable that type of focus time is until it goes away!
Oh sure, lots of things to miss about that time... startup vibes, underdog causes during the worst of the Bush years, and work that ranged from the Mac stuff to Linux/BSD backend admin, PHP dev, introduction of the tech team to SVN/version control, even some music composition for a video. And close work with a bunch of folks on the team who now have their own Wikipedia pages, as well as high-profile clients. My boss left eventually in mid 2005 to go work for (then Senator) Obama and personally interviewed him for / produced his podcast, posted to his Flickr, and that sort of thing.
The commuting... not so much. Moved into DC proper after that year, which itself was a great adventure. Leaving the house at 5:30-6:00am and returning at 8:30-9:00pm was no way to live.
what else has comprehensive off-line docs these days?
I usually make do with `man` pages for C (very comprehensive), and the `python-docs` package in my distro (you can download a static copy of the python documentation, and even the search will work offline). As well as whatever PDF manuals I need for what I'm doing.
As I use Gentoo I also usually have the source code for anything on my system, so I can dig into that if I'm missing some docs, as there's frequently a docs/ folder in the archive.
If I'm missing documentation, I make a note of it and see if there's a way to make it available locally, somehow.
I’ve used this downloadable Python doc set at times, it’s quite good offline.
Rust docs are also available offline. Pretty handy once in a while
https://zealdocs.org/ is surprisingly decent.
https://devdocs.io/
> I don't even have an internet connection.
Vibe coders feeling a great disturbance in the force.
Not immediately of course, you have to wait until the robots are trained on this blogpost.
Using your brain and skills to program is so 2021.
I spent six months coding up a new product in a rented office with no internet. It was a really productive period.
Nomophobia is the word for that lol
Or plain incompetence...
When I was part of a team developing a highly durable texting protocol, those of us in NYC would regularly test messaging while riding the subway. Between stations, you didn't have network access but different devices upon entering the next station would handle and recover from the interruptions in various ways.
The subway produced so many repeatable network connection edge case problems. It was fantastic.
Sounds very cool! Is that protocol still around?
I used to commute 1h40m one way, which accounted for 50mins in a train (+10min avg waiting). While I ususally did pull out my laptop, the productivity just wasn't there - I can't consistently work while groggy/vitamin-d deficient during winter mornings, or in the evening being cooked after having worked for 8 hours (I have an office job, but not programming). The seats are cramped and uncomfortable, not being able to raise my arms enough to use the keyboard without bothering the passanger next to me, so I'd have to put it away during the crowded parts of the ride, and I'd be very frustrated if the train was unusually crowded. Having your "flow" be broken by arriving at the end stop and having to rush to pack your things is awful. The only conversation someone's struck up with me was a guy who insisted he'd never understand what I was doing even if he tried.
Suffice to say, after almost two years of this, I was extremely tired and sleep deprived as this ate away at my available time more than what is reasonable. Using the time for personal projects didn't compensate for it. Never again, it's really not worth it.
Started a comment to write basically what you said. I've been commuting like that for five years. At the end I didn't bother trying anything productive anymore.
Losing 2-3h per day commuting is not something I am gone miss anytime soon.
I used to do work on Caltrain, which used to be like 3 hours of my commute and didn't have any internet, so I would carefully plan what I could do beforehand. My code deploys to a machine that's very different from my laptop, but I had a Docker container set up to cross compile things and loaded up the docs beforehand, so as long as I planned out what I wanted to do.
These days Caltrain is faster and has occasionally frustrating, but fairly good Wi-Fi, so now my constraints are that I don't have a large monitor but not really much else.
3 hours of Caltrain!? I assume that is 90 mins each way. San Jose to SF on a non-express train? That sounds painful!
I take the non-express in the morning and express in the evening, which used to be 105 and 60 minutes respectively prior to electrification. Nowadays it's 75 and 60 which is a little more reasonable. I could in theory take the last express in the morning but I think trying to squeeze in on a packed train that I have to wake up early for isn't really worth it over being able to leave the house at 10 and being guaranteed a table.
https://a.co/d/1lCU1ha for mobile triple head.
I appreciate the suggestion but this is more than twice the weight of my laptop and I would much rather have light than big screen :)
Doing connected work from the subway has gotten much, much easier in the last few years. I attribute that to three things:
1. Cell service has become low-latency. This is very different from "fast", which it has also become! When I started working from the train (on HSPA+), pings in the hundreds of milliseconds were the norm. My first step was usually to SSH to a remote machine, and let just the text lag on me. Nowadays, I can run a Web browser locally without issue.
2. Cell service has, at the same time, become ubiquitous in subway tunnels. When I started, there were some areas that dropped down to EDGE (unusable), and some areas that had no service at all. Now, there is exactly one place on the Boston transit system - Back Bay Station - where I lose cell service.
3. Noise cancelling tech has gotten better. It's not just about noise cancelling headphones: both of my laptops (a 2024 MBP and a ThinkPad P14s) have microphones that can filter out screeching wheels and noisy teenagers quite well. That means I can take meetings without making them miserable for the people on the other end.
These, honestly, are a huge game-changer for me. The ability to take a 30 minute meeting while commuting, where otherwise I would've had to get in early or stay late at work, actually does wonders for my ability to have a life outside of work.
> The ability to take a 30 minute meeting
At the small cost of making everyone around you miserable.
Maybe they mean those meetings when you don't talk much, just listen to everyone else
> 2. Cell service has, at the same time, become ubiquitous in subway tunnels.
Not in New York, unfortunately. All of the stations have cell service, and one tunnel (14th Street L train tunnel under the East River), but everywhere else has no service between stations. It’s an annoying limitation that most cities seem to have fixed by now.
If I rode there I'd consider that a feature, not a limitation.
I do get through lots of books this way!
No one talks on phones anymore anyway. But having data would be nice.
Late 90’s I had a ~90 minute commute for a while (50min train with seat, 20min London Underground seat mostly, 15min train crammed, 10min walk).
The longer train I would use my laptop, same with the 20min underground section on the journey in (going home no chance), but for the packed train and the walk I listened to music (I still have my Diamond Rio PMP300, no idea if it still works, just remember downsampling music to 32kbps to get more on a memory card, quality was less important than quantity - I must have listened to David Gray’s album _White Ladder_ many hundreds of times).
Toshiba laptops (Satellite? I think they were before the Tecras), heavy and the battery life wasn’t much more than 90 minutes but it was just enough. Dual booting Windows and Linux. (Linux for dev work on the go…)
Obviously no mobile connectivity back then, I had to have a plan for what I was going to work on and that also involved backup plans if I ran into a blocker on the primary. Same for the way home.
A bit later I could get GPRS data rates via Infra-Red to my mobile and that just felt like magic.
I found the times I couldn’t be on my laptop (walking or on the packed train) were great for thinking problems through and often had to stop to scribble down thoughts/ideas/solutions in a notebook that I kept in the laptop bag.
Wrote so much useful code in that 18 months without the distractions of the Internet or emails or whatever.
Now I somehow find I have less time despite having virtually no commute. Technology has vastly increased the number of distractions and I have let myself succumb to them. Where I had no real choice in what music I listened to now I have too much choice. There’s always one last thing to check before I get on with a bit of work. Sometimes I wish for simpler times.
White Ladder was a great study accompaniment.
I program and did program anywhere; unlike OP, I thrive in (human) noise: if it's quiet, I cannot focus, so working at home with multi monitor setups etc works against me (music doesn't help: not random enough and I cannot talk to people when I feel the need). I prefer subways, busses, airplanes, lounges, coffeeshops, pubs etc. Offices strangely do not work as I already know those people so I get bored and creativity plummets. My setup now is the best I had ever: a rugged android tablet with week-long battery, running termux with full desktop linux (not rooted) which can run all I want. I run several llms offline on it as well to fix the workflow when I don't have my nice foldable full keyboard out (if no space). I can run everything in our framework, online and offline; when I come back online, I just sync (code AND data) and voila.
Proponents of public transportation often say how they love to be able to use it as peaceful downtime to read, work, meditate, etc.
All my experience with public transportation is having to roll the dice and more often than not losing - having to stand while packed liked sardines into a bus or subway.
Try a commuter train in Switzerland. I work two hours on the train every single day with no issue!
I used to get so much done on my BART commute. Also learned piano on a little 25 key midi keyboard until the program I was learning from started needing a 26th key.
I used to get frustated that the train shook so loud that in combination with the sound of the train I struggled to listen to podcasts, kudos to you.
I sometimes would bring ear-protection headphones that I'd wear over my earbuds to muffle the train noise.
That's so cool. Can you share more about this. What program and keyboard did you use? Did you proceed with more serious learning?
I used an Akai LPK25 with my iPhone (using the Camera Connection Kit and a combined usb hub/dac) and an app called Simply Piano. They make a wireless version of that now that would simplify the setup a great deal. It is a mini keyboard and the keys are quite small, but in my experience it was fine for the beginner stuff (and the keyboard is useful in general later). As I said before, I stuck with this until the app started using keys outside the range I had.
Now, as for "did I proceed with more serious learning" - I alternate though a ton of hobbies. So I moved on after that, though still go back to it from time to time. But I also have other musical interests and it was helpful to those as well.
Also did a lot of music on the commute on my iPhone with Korg Gadget (and Caustic before that). Sometimes with a keyboard, sometimes without.
I recently bought a GPD MicroPC 2, a 7” laptop with a real keyboard. It runs Linux just fine, and it has been a fun experience of having a “real” computer with me much more often than I otherwise would. My version of programming on the subway has been programming on a park bench—it fits in a jacket pocket, or even the back pocket of some of my pants. The keyboard is tiny but easy enough to use with thumbs, or, with some practice, two-handed touch typing on a flat surface.
It’s nice to be less tethered to a desk, while also not having to carry a backpack and heavier full laptop, but still able to remote in and do what I need to do. I really enjoy having a fully capable Linux PC in my pocket vs a smartphone.
> GPD MicroPC 2, a 7” laptop with a real keyboard
Is it actually decent for typing on? I'm perennially tempted, but I'm somewhat skeptical of a small keyboard vs touch typing.
It's surprisingly good! I wouldn't want to type on it all day long, but it works pretty well for me. I just did a cold typing test, not having typed on it in a few days, and got 55wpm touch typing the normal way, and 40wpm with thumbs. On a regular keyboard I can type >100wpm, so it's clearly not quite there, but I much prefer it to a smartphone keyboard, and I can be much more accurate on it without any sort of autocorrect.
Another GPD MicroPC owner here. It’s not quite as comfortable as a normal-sized keyboard, but much more comfortable than it looks. It’s quite decent for occasional recreational programming, and I’ve also used it to write daily blog posts from a long-distance cycling trip.
Back in the 80s I would work on stacks of fanfold code printouts on my trips on the London underground to and from work
My entire stack is meant to let me work offline in random locations. Until recently it was meant to run smoothly on a 12" Macbook. The output is also made for users on spotty internet connections. This comes from years of working while travelling. I can work offline for weeks if needed.
I sometimes do "iPad work", which is essentially researching, reviewing and annotating content on my iPad Mini. I will hop on my bike and work an hour or two in different locations, over coffee or in the sun. It's a relaxing break from working on a computer at a desk.
I do think that people should work in different places. Perhaps we'd have apps that work better on slow internet.
IIRC there are some actual studies that say changing your physical location will actually affect your performance.
In my previous $dayjob I was That Guy who was getting pinged on chats and emails and people dropped in for "just a quick question". When I had to get work done on a deadline, I went to a cafe down the street, turned off the chats, got a massive bucket of coffee, put on my noise cancelling headphones and just ... worked. Later when the office got bigger (multiple stories in the same building), I "hid" on a couch at a complete different department for the same purpose.
That was almost 10 years ago and still my brain connects couches and cafes as deep work places :D
It was mostly to fit my travel habits, but you might be right. Nowadays I work at a cafe with friends every Monday. It's a nice break from WFH.
This is essentially how I work on hobby projects these days. My bus commute is about 45 minutes each way and I find this to be just enough time to get work done. I also try not to work on these projects outside of my commuting hours; this gives me time to mull problems over rather than jumping headlong into writing code.
The lack of internet on the bus has not really been a problem since I plan ahead and make sure any dependencies I need are already downloaded.
I use an old (2010 era) Toshiba netbook which is small enough that I'm not causing problems for my seat neighbours. It's also only got a dual-core 1GHz processor which kind of forces me to find performant solutions to problems.
Much like the author I've also been thinking about how I can make my setup more portable. I've been considering purchasing AR glasses and using my Charachorder2 so I don't even need to get the netbook out of my bag. At this stage I can't justify the cost of a pair of AR glasses though.
Some recent projects my commute has given me the time to work on:
- a text editor (OCaml, SDL)
- a 3D game (C, OpenGL)
- an x86 operating system (Zig)
Do you have a public GitHub profile? Those projects sound cool.
Sadly, only the text editor is on public source control at the moment (https://github.com/jpsheehan/ocaml-edit). The game project and operating system are ongoing until I get bored of them and move on to something else. Most of my obsessions over the last few years have been bus projects. My Tetris clone is another example (C, SDL): https://github.com/jpsheehan/tetris
Did this for a couple years on a 45 minute CTA commute in Chicago while I was learning to code outside my day job, it honestly made that commute not even feel burdensome. Key was that I was 1.) on the brown line, which was still running the 3200-series cars with plentiful seats, and 2.) at an early enough stop to reliably get one. And can confirm an old Thinkpad (x220 at the time) is the king of commute coding.
When I used to ride Caltrain to/from work, I would often have an uninterrupted stretch of 45+ minutes in a cozy single seat (I would always take an upper deck seat in the "gallery" car) to either doze off or use this time to focus on something. I would get so much done on those days if I managed to avoid the sun blasting too much sunlight on my screen/seat. This commuter rail experience is probably familiar to many of us, but it's specific to commuter rail - being a passenger on a subway or in a car/bus is too chaotic or bumpy to do this.
More generally, I find that switching up your surroundings is absolutely vital for your brain's ability to focus on hard tasks. I will hit a wall if I try to work multiple 10+ hour days sitting in one spot, but a comfortable spot in a different coffee shop or lounge can totally trick my brain into powering through.
I wrote nearly all of https://apps.apple.com/us/app/two-birds-one-stone/id15396463... on a train without internet. It was about a half hour journey, and I found that in such a short amount of time, I would set a small goal and work in a very distraction free way to achieve it. It was very good for doing small things, but sometimes doing larger things (like big refactors) is a bit more difficult. On occasion, I would also dedicate a train ride to just writing up a todo list.
I gave myself the rule of no internet while on the train, so sometimes I would just accumulate a list of questions I wanted to answer later.
There is definitely something to it, and you can get heaps done, but it needs to be supported with some non-train time (e.g. for me, it was all the app store stuff, debugging with real hardware, etc)
30 minutes can be plenty of time for implementing a feature. If you got your priorities straight.
Working on the metro makes a boring commute fly by - blink and you are at your destination already. 30 minutes each way is 1 hour a day. Over the entire year it's 250+ hours or 9 whole 16-hour days.
That's why whenever I move to a new city, I typically look to live somewhere that's at the end of the metro line. It meant in the morning commute I can _always_ get a seat.
That was one of the reasons I liked living in Hammersmith when I worked in Shoreditch/Old Street - it's at the end of the Hammersmith and City Line and I don't have to change lines. There's also the add bonus that the line is above ground until Paddington which meant I have more than enough time to load up any tabs I need to use before the Internet blackout.
In Hong Kong I worked at Central and lived in Tsuen Wan. Literally from one end of the line to the other. This had the added bonus that I was also guaranteed a seat on the way home as well.
17 years ago I went to a summer vacation with my family (still a teenager). That meant 10 days without any internet connectivity. I just got my first laptop and I was allowed to take it with me. I was reverse engineering MSN Messenger's user to user and profile picture exchange protocol from TCP dumps. MSN Messenger did not use any encryption. Before I went to the vacation I recorded a bunch of sessions with Wireshark (maybe it was still Ethereal back then). Then for 10 days I was just trying to figure out from the dumps how the binary protocol worked and was writing the code without any way to test it. When I came back I just had to fix some minor bugs and it worked. Fun times.
I was in Philadelphia for a week and also used my commute time (2 hours in total each day) to program. As a web developer who uses Github Copilot and often checks documentation online, I did not have such a good experience as OP had. Mobile data is pretty much nonexistent in Philadelphia in the subway and there are also no wifi Hotspots. Sure, it was better than nothing, but I would quite often find myself waiting for the subway to arrive at stations and hoping that there is at least some internet connectivity there.
> Currently I am working on affixing a split keyboard to my pants, so that I can program while standing up.
This reminded me of the "walking desk" Stephen Wolfram uses to program:
https://content.wolfram.com/sites/43/2019/02/07-popcorn-rig1...
I tried to use a similar one during Covid and couldn't get into it at all.
> I've had good conversations with strangers
Laptops sometimes have stickers. For a time, I instead had a transparent slip cover, to vary the sticker set, user-test alternatives, and throttle conversations. Science education topics (Boston/Cambridge subway). Anti-patriarchy stickers drew proto-MAGAs. Some backpacks now have low-res screens built into the back, suggesting new possibilities.
One Laptop Per Child, at its peak, generated fun continuous crowd conversations.
> a pair of glasses with a screen inside of them
I've no idea what current tech is like, but I use to proselytize aphysical UIs, where a small head motion results in larger screen motion, to reduce neck swiveling.[1]
> weirder
Laptop harness walking desks are a thing. And one can do hand and head tracking[2] (I had that setup at a meetup where the swag was little stick-on privacy shutters for laptop webcams :). Boston/Cambridge is perhaps culturally a best case for such games - I've not tried them in NYC... hmm.
> but something very complex, [...] instead sketch out a diagram on a piece of paper [...] keep a small notebook in my bag
Same. I've tried swapping in an iPad, but it hasn't stuck.
[1] silly old demo, 5k on a bus: https://x.com/mncharity/status/1225091755667853318 [2] https://imgur.com/a/keyboard-cam-Z1VipaL
I’ve done this before, but you need a relatively long subway ride without any transfers. IMO, 30 minutes is just barely at the edge of being worthwhile, and only if you can get a seat right when you get on, and only if the seat isn’t so cramped that it’s actually possible to get your laptop out of your bag. This happens rarely.
But on longer trips from e.g. upper Manhattan to deep Brooklyn, particularly at off-peak hours when I have room to spread out—yeah, I’ve had some very productive sessions.
I work/program on CalTrain but that’s pretty common. NYC subway or BART seems a bit more challenging.
It’s overall time much better spent than being stuck in a car.
I've done it a few times on city busses which I'd say are worse than subway. Less legroom, bumpier ride, more people passing by. My 13" laptop barely fit.
It's not something I'd want to do on the daily but if you really need to get something done and are running out of time (those busses get stuck in traffic for half an hour or more), it's doable.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43894305
You can use commute time for day dreaming. It's not a waste of time
Ever since moving to Germany, one of my favourite treats has been to jump on a train out to the countryside, program on the train, and then go for a hike, do some more programming during lunch, and then program on the train on my way home.
It's often less productive than a normal workday so i dont do it super often, but It's very enjoyable, and the change of scenery sometimes helps me get unstuck on problems.
Coding on metros, trains, buses and planes is exactly the reason I always make sure my dev environments work 100% offline, with dummy services in place of the real ones.
One thing I love about coding on public transport is the sense of urgency can be fun.
Being on the verge of figuring out a bugfix or whatever when you know train is pulling into the station and you have maybe a minute to go, cracking it, quick test, bundle the laptop quickly back into your bag as you step off the train is quite a nice feeling.
Yeah I even do it in Ubers nowadays.
I actually feel like oversea flights are my most productive sessions.
I could totally see my using the train to drive through the country to work on some stuff, where I barely need internet.
It’s almost always better than my 49 inch monitor at home lol.
A couple of weeks ago I was in Copenhagen, and had to take the metro back and forth a bunch of times throughout the day. I noticed some guy riding the "Cityringen" line, which goes in a loop, working on his laptop - coding in some CLI editor. Noticed the same guy a couple of times throughout the day, sitting in the same spot.
Figured he just used the metro as his workplace.
I decided to cut an hour out of my in-the-office time recently, figuring that I'm sitting on the bus for any hour anyway, so I might as well use that time to knock some work out instead. Tethering is pretty good other than a predictable problem spot or two.
Much better experience than working on a plane. I've done a handful of cross-US flights this year on Alaska Airlines, and trying to do anything network-related on those flights was torture. Super spotty, high latencies, constant timeouts; very frustrating.
I love making money for my employer with every spare moment of my life.
If you took the time to read the first paragraph instead of typing this snarky comment, you'd know he's working on his personal projects.
Not paying attention on the train, even in 2025 girliepop-influencer-Instragram-latte-art New York, is not the smartest. You're probably better off during rush hour, but being aware of your surroundings is never a bad idea, even in "safe" New York.
Do your work today and tomorrow you can fool around and have some fun. Do the minimum today so you can do the maximum tomorrow rarely makes sense.
I have also contemplated wearing a keyboard on my pants and using a pair of “XR glasses” (like those by X-Real or Viture) as a display.
I would absolutely never do this in a public place, much less a crowded one.
This guy’s figured it out though.
https://evantravers.com/articles/2023/04/06/magsafe-tenting-...
I use these same tripods with magsafe stickers (to be used next on my newer Glove80 with Pro Reds). It works well. I also use them atop somewhat taller mini tripods for other ergonomic situations, or with clamps attached to my chair. It's very quick to move the keyboard halves around and use during travel where desks will not be at ergonomic heights.
Very curious what other tripods you’ve found suitable for this purpose. At my own workstation, I use a pair of adhesive dashboard mounts, which allows me to achieve some pretty extreme tenting (see https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/1p1q5xz/), but while out and about, I worry that such light boards would get jostled around on a desk/table if tented as hard as I usually do.
I use two of these: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B077JX7GBL?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_d... it lets me tent at nearly 90 deg which is great. And it is also good for reclining on my LC4, where I use two Perriand berger stools as armrests and a Levo laptop stand.
For something sturdier I use Ulanzi super clamps with extensions.
The Glove80 (which is fantastic, as a 15 year Kinesis Aadvantage user prior) also has a tripod mounting kit which I haven't tried yet.
Very informative, thanks
Sure. The Nebula tripod is also tall enough to be just high enough to use while sitting on typical chairs, if you're ok with somewhat low keyboards / have long arms. It's a great at both lower and mid-range heights which makes it quite versatile as a portable tripod, aside from desktop use (although it would also be useful with "standing desk" laptop risers that go on top of other surfaces). It helps to rotate the tripod legs appropriately for stability when tented.
I used to do this as I commuted on the train between school and my hometown in the early 2010s. As a way to learn and pass the time.
No access to internet so mostly hacking from memory. I could use man pages for C, but Haskell was a bit more tricky.
Sometimes I’d just end up sketching things out on paper, but eventually I could complete entire modules without looking anything up. Was always a bummer to be stuck on something that I knew could be answered online in mere seconds. Good times.
"On the subway, I'm missing a lot of my normal setup [...] I don't even have an internet connection"
There is no cellular data in the NYC subway? I had to look it up online and apparently there is but coverage is quite patchy. That's very surprising to learn, NYC being one of the most developped and richest cities in the world. By comparison, and from my experience, the Parisian metro has excellent coverage.
Haa don’t get me started about BART. Though maybe that’s just me problem not having Verizon.
I switched from a 1h30 of commute by bus to 15 minutes by car a while back ; then I switched jobs and now have 1h total commute. It's kind of annoying that I can't do anything of substance during this time because I'm driving. I used to read on the bus and while I don't miss the bus, I certainly miss the reading.
I used to program on the Boston T. I had my little MSI Wind netbook and I coded a game on my commutes to and from work. I eventually ported that game to Android.
I love to program on my commute. When I took NJ Transit bus, when I took NY Ferry, when I took MetroNorth.
But I’ve never felt comfortable opening a laptop on the NYC subway. It wasn’t about the safety that OP describes. It was about the culture and the physical configuration (facing middle with strap hangers vs facing front/back). It just didn’t feel right in the subway.
I do miss the MetroNorth Bar Car! I could drink and code and it was jovial.
I once had an 1.75 hour commute each way, 3.5 hours daily. I had to program during the commute---otherwise there weren't enough hours in the day to get my work done. There were periods of laptop-closed thinking, but no daydreaming or looking at the scenery. No Internet connectivity, so I had to plan carefully.
30 minutes is enough? I hope this person doesn't complain about "flow state" when I interrupt him by dropping by at his desk then!
I've done this! https://a.co/d/80C2EQ5 is the harness I use for it. It's main problem is you look like a total dork, but picking up potential partners on the subway is a faux pas anyway, so that's less of an issue, but still.
I have always enjoyed it. I have even gotten comments "can you really do anything in such a short period of time" but i have found that even 20 min sessions on a commute can be effective. For a major project I did the final push on such a commute just hoping the push could complete before the train reached the tunnel without coverage, and it did
Reminds me of this metafilter thread [0] where people asked/shared less usual work locations. Hotel lobbies are a great one, as have laundromats sometimes been in the past.
An intercity train with wifi/cell service (and tea!) is an incredible focussing function as well. You got 3 hours and a beautiful not too distracting view. Go!
P.s. I also suggested to Stephen that he gets a Nathan Fielder “laptop harness” for his subway work..? Has anyone tried this?
[0] https://ask.metafilter.com/316039/Ideas-for-workspaces-pleas...
Louis Rrossmann[0] had a massive tirade against Macbooks over a decade ago because they didn't have a battery hump in the back.
Why you ask?
I'll tell you. He edited videos on the NY subway using his Lenovo(?) laptop with a massive extra battery hump in the back, which he used as a handle to hold on to with one hand while he typed with the other.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/@rossmanngroup
Years ago I was part of a cross-disciplinary group doing game development.
After our standup in the morning, the graphics artists would have made tons of drawings on the paper table cloth. If they had access to a pen and paper, they would be drawing.
I used to regularly do work on my laptop on the subway, and then the PATH, after I moved to NJ. You don't see a whole lot of people doing it but it's very doable. I tether to get online via my phone.
I don't understand how this is possible. I've heard the New York Subway system is riddled with antisocial behaviour, homeless, drunks, people pissing everywhere, etc.
People say the same thing about BART but it’s not bad at all. Turns out people on the internet aren’t reliable.
Not often, and not recommended, but I have coded on the cockpit table while single-handing a sailboat. Interrupting a conference call with “sorry, one moment, I have to tack out of the fleet” is its own special joy.
>Currently I am working on affixing a split keyboard to my pants, so that I can program while standing up.
This has to be satire.
I do leetcode in the browser on my phone sometimes lol. It's far from ideal, but most of the work is thinking rather than typing.
> Between work, meetups, and social events, I have noticeably less time for side projects than I had before moving here.
Lucky you. :) Good problem to have.
With some noise cancelling headphones, it may actually help with focus. I'm a fan of doing things on the subway.
I do my best thinking on the bus.
Does anyone make a mobile cursor that can be remotely controlled? Like, I can keep tapping (tab, tab, tab), and it will automatically switch and zoom to the next window.
Sounds like a 1-way ticket to burnout.
I did my calculus homework on the subway.
I developed a big chunk of my Scumm games decompiler in London's central line. I was lucky (or unlucky) enough to go far enough each day to always hand an empty seat and enjoy 30 minutes of me time each way.
All on a Chromebook with crostini. Cheap, long battery life and decent keyboard.
My experience of the central line couldn't have been more different - commuting between Bethnal Green and Holborn, often having to wait 20-25 mins on the platform, letting a dozen trains go by before finally managing to squeeze on, followed by 9 minutes crouching under someone's armpit.
No chance of reading my phone or Kindle, let alone using a laptop!
This is how transplants get mugged, but okay. Why not just enjoy your hour of zen instead of constantly working?
Eh. My preferred subway activity is to listen to music and stare at the ground. I don't know... do I really need to stare at my computer screen every waking moment?
I've done a lot of programming in public transport. It helps to shut out the environment with blasting black metal, pick an album that is almost entirely screaming tremolos, and then run a script with a sleep or Process.send_after or something that throws up send-notify bubbles when it's about time to pack up.
How dare a human be unproductive for 4% of a day.
[dead]
[dead]
With coding agents AI almost never manually type code anymore. It would be great to have a code editor that runs on my phone so I can do voice prompts and let the coding agents type stuff for me.
That sounds awful
Similar to a product or engineering manager giving directions on a call from the golf course.
Golf course isn't bad; I witnessed a CEO join meetings from the subway and packed airport concourses lol
Early in my career I drew the short straw to fetch a C level exec who was running a critical incident from a strip club and too drunk to drive.
I had to pay the $90 three drink minimum to get in. Getting that reimbursed was fun.
But hey, look how productive they are with their time! :)
Funny enough, that sounds awful, too.
I have been doing this with GitHub's copilot agent web interface on my phone; word-vomit voice prompt + instructions to always run the tests or take screenshots so I can evaluate the change works really well.
I thought this was a joke until I read your profile. I hope you get better. <3
Claude does this, at least on an iPhone. They added Code to the app about a month ago. I used it to get a Pebble Watch project started.