But then I'm also part of the generation that had Atari. Then Nintendo. Gameboy was awesome too. And even a Sega Genesis system. And beyond. Computers came along, amazing as they were, offering some game called Doom that you had to load from DOS. Duke Nukem. Wolfenstein 3d. Quake was another. As the years progressed, so did the games. And I spent my teenage years in the gaming world. MMOPRGs. Specifcally, Subspace (now known as Continuum) and Asheron's Call (discontinued in 2017), if any of you were lucky enough to play.

As I got older, however, getting jobs, going off to college, I played games less and less, hoping that someday, maybe I would find the time to play them again. Between work and side projects and life, the prospect of gaming again just seems unlikely at this time. I think about it.. I even buy games from SteamPowered, usually when they are on sale, hoping to play them, but I never really get a chance, and if I do, it might be that I took a day or two just to try them out, before getting back into programming.

I keep returning back to my side projects and programming because it makes me feel productive. When I'm not coding, I feel like I'm wasting time not doing "what I need to do". The guilt builds up inside me which prevents me from gaming and I know I need to stick to coding. I feel that if I am going to be successful, whether it just be creating a few popular web apps, starting a business, or generating some recurring income, that I have to keep programming.

So for those of you who did not give up gaming and are programmers with side projects, how you split your time and how do you not feel guilty about it?