I’m an older dude whose phase of staying up all night playing was back in the early console days. I prefer in-person tabletop RPGs like D&D, Traveller and Call of Cthulhu. Just not into computer games anymore, but that and social media seem to be most people’s primary computer activities.
Game chatter has changed over the years - I used to see a lot of talk about graphics quality and massively powerful hardware - maybe that was during a period when it was rapidly improving, I dunno. But the current focus seems to be more on game industry business decisions sucking.
Anyway I’m just wondering how common it is to use computers more for coding and other technical non-game stuff.
A lot of people in IT, especially programmers I have met, are completely uninterested in gaming.
To be sure, there are PLENTY of gamers in IT, but many people I have met are done with computers once they get home.
My friend, a longtime Java dev, hasn’t written a line of code since his last day at work. I do lots of hobby coding and will probably die at the keyboard lol.
I work with several devs who would rather never see a computer again.
LOL there should be an Amish-like community where some tech people can live after they leave the field.
Low tech commune.
Or maybe just a place that has tech but they’re not involved at all in running it, and definitely not expected to be the default tech support lol.
I was trying to imagine it and can’t imagine seeing new tech and not putting my hands on it.
They would have counselors available.
many people I have met are done with computers once they get home.
This is me. After 25 years in corporate IT, I have little to no interest in sitting down at a computer anymore. My personal box only gets turned on a few times a month. Casual browsing and such is done on mobile, gaming on console. Once upon a time I spun up VMs for fun and knew everything that was running on my system. Never had the patience (or desire) to go full Linux, and between work sucking out the joy and enshittification overrunning modern commercial OSes, I just stopped having the energy to get excited. So the box only get used when I have something to do that’s more involved than light spreadsheet work etc.
I am very much a Lemmy outlier lol.
I’m a developer and games are a snooze fest in my book. I’m just always frustrated and think too much about how it was programmed and want to change stuff; I never get into the world of the game.
When I first got into VR though it was mind-blowing. I’m an on again, off again VR user and haven’t thrown any more money into it but it’s a great way to exercise.
i dont really game. my hobbies are more self-hosting, service related stuff. giant media library… distributed av system. lots of docker, server stuff.
the selfhosting communities have some interesting traffic
And home automation! Microcontrollers! I do try to game, but its just not that fun anymore. Nothing beats 8vs8 quake on school lan anyways
4 hours and 52 comments, and not a single mention of what we all knew even before Avenue Q:
The Internet is for porn. Everything else is just what happens between porn.
More seriously, my desktop is where I do larger research that will require more than a couple of tabs. Little to no gaming there. Other PCs are mainly for videos.
I do play games, but I also work on creative projects and watch shows/movies on my computer. I use Illustrator to create typeface designs, graphic design for laser cutting or stickers, 3D modeling and slicing programs for my 3D printer, Google Docs for writing, coding for Raspberry Pi and Arduino projects, et al.
3d modeling and printing are major things now. I’m into that as well, and also playing with Arduino and ESP32 for home automation and building little robotic tings. Writing code has always felt kind of like a game to me.
I’m not a gamer. Work at computer all day, only mobile (no games either) outside work.
Linux stuff
this for me too
I use online games as a way to hang out with friends. Usually it’s about an hour or two a day. The rest of my computer time is spent coding or doing work stuff.
I’m a recreational coder first and foremost. Sometimes I play games, but rarely all the way through
I used to use mine for games but I don’t really play games any more. So for the last year or two my PC has been mostly dedicated to CAD, PCB design, coding, et cetera.
I rarely play games on my computers, coding is the bulk of what I do, the rest is data analysis, email and research.
I pretty much stopped gaming when I started working serious jobs after college. I was a designer and front end dev, then design lead for a startup (where I allowed myself to be overworked, especially around deadlines). It’s a lot of screen time and playing games when I got home lost it’s appeal. Plus I’d switched to Macs, and my favorite multiplayer games were being over run by cheating (mid 2000s).
My gaming PC became my self-hosted server around 5 years ago. Now it runs 24/7 serving up media through Emby, providing backup/cloud/vpn services to my mobile devices, DNS adblocking for everything on the LAN/VPN, password manager syncing, and whatever else I feel like playing with :)
Time, energy, and willpower just never seem to come together for gaming anymore. And on the rare occasions it does, that PC still games just fine; even after making the move to Debian last year.
Does collaborative writing for fun count as games? The communities involved call them games, but there’s no thoughts about control schemes or graphics, and no need to do anything outside your browser. That, chat, social media, reading (both for work and personal time), and the like take up the bulk of my PC time.
I would call collaborative writing computer use but not a computer game. Programming feels like a game to me!
I think, here on Lemmy, there’s relatively many folks who use their computers for other things, given there’s so many techies here…
I don’t use my laptop much anymore (don’t have a desktop either): Some modeling, accounting, spreadsheets, or doc composition; things that are cumbersome to do well on a tablet. General browsing and videos are on my phone, tablet, or cast to the TV. When I want to game it’s usually on my switch.
It’s The laptop is really my device of last resort. I know it will do exactly what I want it to do, but I have to dig it out, clear space for it and usually plug it in if it’s not a quick job because the thing is old and an energy hog. My tablet is newer and I got it a convertible laptop-like keyboard case. The battery lasts so much longer and it’s just easier to lug around to where I need it for whatever.
Laptops … I never could get used to them. The keyboards feel too tiny and I can’t stand trackpads. Give me my dual monitor PC! Apparently there are people who actually write code on phones, which would be my idea of hell.
