I have spurts of this, occasionally I’ll spend a month of evenings/weekend time doing a project. It’s usually when work isn’t scratching the right sort of itch, so I scratch it elsewhere.

Personal projects are often embedded coding of some sort, though I spent some time poking at the PS3 firmware when that was first cracked too.

Spending months reversing and emulating a console… that takes dedication I don’t have though. I guess these guys are really itchy? Or it’s in a really hard to reach spot?

Honestly, it happens when I get some weird idea in my head that I can't stop thinking about, and a sort of mania takes over and gives me the energy and drive to work on it for hours on end.

That's about the only time I can do honest work programming. It makes me avoid doing programming tasks at work and try to find more writing-related stuff ...

(not that you should take advice from random strangers on the internet, but) that sounds like classic ADHD hyperfocus to me. Giving a name to it might help in figuring out how to maximize its benefit.

I experience the same hyperfocus, but I don't have ADHD, I'm quite the opposite really. My background is design and when I was a child I could easily 'get lost' in various forms of art etc for hours. I've met plenty people over the years that are the same, so I'd argue it might be something more aligned with some creative and analytical thought process, and a drive etc to understand/solve the problem at hand.

In terms of where to find the time, there are 24 hours in the day, at least 8 for working the 9-5.

There are three types of ADD[1]. That which you describe here sounds a lot like the "Inattentive" type.

[1] https://www.healthline.com/health/adhd/three-types-adhd

I've learned something new, thank you!

Ditto, that kind of mania is a force to be reckoned with. On one hand you get insane productivity and momentum from it and on the other hand can cause you to momentarily neglect some responsibilities. I have a love/hate relationship with that side of mine.

It helps when the end goal is really well defined like a software emulator. Nearly everything that could slow you down is a known quantity. Conversely, the unknowns, like how to implement native hardware API X on non-native non-accelerated platform Y, are naturally where community emulators are weakest.

Honestly I agree with this.

When I was more junior, or not doing programming as a full time job, I was more motivated to work on personal projects. Now I am more senior and programming/managing people full time, I can't get motivated to work on code-related projects in my downtime. It sucks :/

I’m in a senior position and most of my time goes to architecting and design work. I barely get to code at my day job.

I just use my free time to code. I see it as a relaxing activity

Same, I never code personally as much as when I'm in a management position. When coding during the day (which I like very much), I have less side projects or they tend to languish.

I don’t code all that much at work. Personal projects and open source work are my opportunity to make things I want.

> how do you guys find the energy to hack nights and weekends? I do enjoy hobby programming but it takes me at least one week of vacation to detox from the work grind so I end up doing it only when I have extended vacation

Namely passion, curiosity and probably not having much more other hobbies beside programming or hacking stuff around.

I recently went to try to improve a Linux kernel input device driver for a USB headphone: adding unit tests (whose execution is nearly instant). I have learned a ton of things about Linux development, C (I don't know C at all), input devices driver system (hid), the USB protocol and my device specifications.

I have never managed to boot it live to test with my actual device. That is despite spending probably despite spending probably 40 hours including a 10pm - 4am session on a Saturday night. But I had lot of fun doing it and I think that was the point.

I guess you can't beat passion and curiosity.

in addition to what the others have said, I go home every day at 5 pm, no crunch or grind, no work calls outside of working hours. (luckily I live somewhere where that is guaranteed by law).

I think keeping a schedule that way has prevented me from every souring on programming in my free time.

Working with code day to day has almost fostered in me a sense of contempt for computers. In high school/college, I spent a lot of free time doing rom hacks, etc. I just can't now. Now my tech hobbies lay more around arcade repair/modding. Knowing what I know now, I wish I could muster up the energy to combine the two and work on projects similar to UMK3+ [0], but I just don't feel like sitting in front of a debugger all evening after coding all day at work :|

I guess in my case, I had to find a hobby that was not exactly like work, even if it was work-adjacent.

0 - https://mkombat.plus/

The key for me is that it has to be 100% fun. As soon as I start thinking about external recognition or trying to make money off of a personal project I lose motivation. Right now despite coding all day at work I still have the energy for coding on my own time on a NES emulator just because it's really fun.