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What's the Most Unusual Place You’ve Ever Coded From?

Ben Halpern on April 23, 2023

Have you ever coded from a strange, remote, or unusual location? A mountaintop, a beach, a hot air balloon…the room where you grandma stores her an...
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Joe Mainwaring

From my Oncology appointments.

I don’t have to work from doctors appointments but when each Chemo round involves sitting in a chair at the hospital for 6 hours every two weeks, you work to just keep yourself busy with something to do.

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Heather Williams

Probably the chaos of my mom's house when we were renovating it, I had a chair set up in the midst of the chaos, internet and my laptop. But I have also worked from: my car, my garden, a random and eclectic array of coffee shops and in the middle of a shop (mostly just responding to colleagues on slack or answering an urgent question). I have also taken meetings from parking lots when I have not made it home in time for a meeting after an appointment or a morning walk.

Remote work is fun and allows me to see more of my city than I would otherwise see.

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Heather Williams

I do have a good work life balance for those wandering about that, but the flexibility to run errands whenever you need to while been in a senior position means you keep your phone close during work hours even if you are out and about.

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Philip John Basile

from the beach!

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Attila Béli

I was about to head to a summer festival on the countryside with friends (I was the driver), all things packed, everyone was waiting for me, but my work still wasn't finished. I promised to commit my code by next morning.
I needed to take a longer break to refresh my mind anyway, so I thought I will finish it when we get there using my mobile hotspot. By the time of arrival, the sun was about to rise, I had like 2 hours left. Then the surprise, there was no signal...
Quickly ran back to my car with the laptop and all and drove back on dirt roads like 6km constantly checking the signal, then finally parked next to a cropland in the middle of nowhere to have sufficient bars for a stable database connection.
It started to get reeeally hot in the car (surely above 35 degrees celsius), I had no AC, so pulled the windows, which in turn allowed all the bugs and critters of nature to fly through the car as they pleased :D
But the story has a happy end: finished my work on the backend and commited my code just in time.

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Gauthier C • Edited

that would be an incredible movie ahah

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Rachel Fazio

This is such a great story

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Ingo Steinke, web developer

I worked from a camping site for several days, which is less romantic than it might sound or look from an outside perspective. It was hot inside the camper van, loud outside (on the countryside, the is always someone mowing a meadow or cutting wood it seems), and no electricity on the beautiful meadow where wanderers had mistaken my laptop to be an easel, so I must have been an open air artist. So sad to disappoint them. It was a nice experience, but I prefer a desk in a room for everyday work.
Man with a straw hat and laptop outdoors and inside a camper van

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Jon Randy 🎖️

From the position of wayyyy too much alcohol. The code worked, and worked extremely well... But, could sober me understand it? Not a chance

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ar4toX

humans:1
chatgpt:0

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Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard • Edited

Not really coding, but I got all my good idea either on the toilet, or when I walk my dog along the Seine river.

I also remember when I was 20 and a math school, I could struggle for two hours on a hard math problem until past midnight.
Then in the morning, I woke up and just wrote down the solution as if my brain had taken care of it in while dreaming.

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ar4toX

Background processes be like:

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Marcel Campello

Locked in an underground military facility.

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Fyodor

Where did you say you’re from? 😅

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Ben Sinclair

Oh, alright. The weirdest place would have to be... oh, the foot of the bed.

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jsmanifest

I coded before at (warning):

  • College campus library (I was never a student of it nor did I attend any orientations)
  • Park parking lot
  • Gym parking lot
  • Some plaza's parking lot
  • Target parking lot
  • El super's parking lot
  • My apartment's public lobby's small room thing
  • Panera bread
  • Starbucks
  • Coffee bean
  • Park
  • Street curb in a residential street
  • Some local coffee spots
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Jack

Remote working for 6+ years, including:
Aeroplane
Carpark
My parents' conservatory in January 🥶
Many hotels
Kids' football lesson
Car garage
The pub
Butlins
Bed
Cafes
Tescos 🤷
And once I even went into the office to code

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Imam Ali Mustofa

TOILET while pup, fixing bug and maintain production database using Termux.

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Mark Railton • Edited

For me I’d say on a boat on the Celtic Sea between Ireland and France a few years ago. One of those crossings that takes like 20 hours so decided to get some work on a side project done whilst kids went to bed.

Next to that, my car parked in the hospital carpark whilst my wife was on the labour ward but I couldn’t join her due to Covid restrictions

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Rachel Fazio

Not coding but I remember writing a personal choice statement for applying to a research position in college in the car on a road trip, while my friend copy edited verbally for me while driving. We finished it by the time we got to our destination and I submitted it and got in and everything!

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Anand Chandrasekaran
  • in a night pub on a friday night (i still liked that better than just dancing around that night)

    • in a movie theatre on a random night when servers decide to have a field day
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Sanjeev
  • Mid air✈️: was on a flight, had to finish coding for some coding challenge. It turned out to be possibly the calmest 2.5 hours that one can get while traveling 👌
  • Hospital waiting room🩺: So, my mom was admit for a surgery. I had to wait couple of hours in the waiting room. I was working on a customer's issue. Took out my work laptop and started coding.
  • Coffee shops☕: I have tried this a couple of times. Mostly if I'm getting bored but have some interesting problems to solve.
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Nans Dumortier

At the passenger seat of a car, on the highway !

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raddevus

Server Room! It's terrible unless you have a winter coat on. So cold!!

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NLxDoDge

The bus (public transport).

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Volker Kroll

I designed (and coded) a big database in a pub with a beer on the table. The database is still in use as backend system of a shop. (Probably the bartender was thinking I was a weird guy)

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Alessandro Pischedda

Not developing but debugging from inside a yacht during the end of its construction

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Nabil Alamin

Probably the most mundane, but I've coded in a cab before.