Twitter. I just don't get it.

..and I have really tried. Everybody seems to be twittering and everybody seems to be raving about Twitter. I just can't get excited about it. Maybe I'm getting old. I think of Twitter as the online equivalent of SMS, and since I've probably only ever sent five SMS's in my life, no wonder I don't get Twitter.

It seems like such a waste of time. More digital interference. I have enough of that with Email and RSS. Take for example Stephen Fry. Apparently the most popular Twitterer (is that even correct nomenclature?) out there. Now, I really like Stephen Fry, he's witty, funny, and all in an ultra-intelligent way, but do I really need to know when he gets stuck in a lift?

I've also tried following some of my favourite bloggers, but all I see is a whole load of inane tweets about what they're currently looking at on the web (sometimes useful, but for every decent tip, I have to wade through a whole load of rubbish), or what they're currently cooking etc etc. I guess for someone like me, who works from home, it replaces the idle chatter of the office environment. Since I always thought that was a big waste of time anyway, why should digital idle chat be any different?

While Stephen Fry was stuck in his lift, and Jeff Atwood was struggling with his servers, I was earning a living, or spending time with my daughter, or working on the house. In other words I was living in the real world. I just don't have time for Twitter, and I bet all those raving about it will realise soon enough that they don't have much time for it either.

Working from home

As I approach the fifth anniversary of working from home, I'm starting to think about the pros and cons of working remotely. Joel Spolsky has said many times on his blog and his podcast that he thinks developers should be in the office, and not work from home. Jeff Atwood his co-conspirator on the Stack Overflow podcast meanwhile is currently working from home on Stackoverflow.com, with another two developers, who are also working from home (and I don't mean his home!). He obviously thinks it's a good idea. So do I.

I get my own room, with a closing door, something I would not have at the office. I start working in the morning completely fresh, as opposed to being worn out from the hour commute. On top of all that, I'm happier than ever, because I get to see my daughter growing up. A happy developer is a contented developer is a productive developer.

Ok, so what's the catch? Well, I'm sure not everyone is cut out for working from home. It can get lonely I guess, but I have my own social life, and it never did revolve around the geeks I worked with. (no offence, I'm a geek too, just prefer the company of non-geeks to try and keep sane!) I have a fast broadband connection, with vpn access into the network at work. So I'm just in an office with a long network cable. I checkout, I commit, I do all the usual things I would do if I was in the office. Some cite communication, or lack of it as a problem. I guess it can be, but I can discuss things over the phone (for some reason, company policy prohibits Skype), I can "look over someone's shoulder" using VNC or Webex. I regularly review code with both developers and testers. It works well.

Not to be 100% biased, I would say there are two major problems, and unless you can overcome them, they might make working from home difficult. The first is motivation. Or rather lack of it. I've been doing this for so long now, that I get up in the morning, and just 'go to work'. That happens to be down the hall from the bedroom, but it's where I work. There are times when you just can't concentrate, and there are other times when you can't stop concentrating. It's the same when you're in an office, it's just that in the office, your boss is around, so you pretend to work. At home, I know that if I'm not concentrating now, I'll be productive later. So I'll do something else. The work get's done. That's the main thing. The second problem is paradoxically, the opposite of the first one. Knowing when to stop! Separating work from home life. I confess that I have more problems with this one than the first. I have no real solution for this one, except perhaps a nagging wife!