I recently bought a GPD MicroPC 2, a 7” laptop with a real keyboard. It runs Linux just fine, and it has been a fun experience of having a “real” computer with me much more often than I otherwise would. My version of programming on the subway has been programming on a park bench—it fits in a jacket pocket, or even the back pocket of some of my pants. The keyboard is tiny but easy enough to use with thumbs, or, with some practice, two-handed touch typing on a flat surface.
It’s nice to be less tethered to a desk, while also not having to carry a backpack and heavier full laptop, but still able to remote in and do what I need to do. I really enjoy having a fully capable Linux PC in my pocket vs a smartphone.
Here is a description of the daily commute by Michael Milken, 1980s junk bond king, as told in "Predator's Ball" by Connie Bruck:
At 5:30am each weekday in the early 1970s, a bus pulled up to a stop in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and a young man lugging a bag that bulged with papers mounted its steps. He was making the two-hour commute to New York City, where he worked at the investment banking firm of Drexel Firestone. The train would have provided a more comfortable and faster ride; but, for those very reasons, it also offered more opportunity to meet other Wall Street acquaintances. They would want to engage in the kind of idle small talk that commuters share to pass the time. The thought must have been intolerable. He did not wish to be rude, but he wanted no interruption.
As soon as he had settled into his seat, being sure to take one with an empty one adjacent, he unloaded a mountain of prospectuses and 10ks (annual Securities and Exchange Commission filings) onto the seat next to him. On winter mornings the sky was still pitch black and the light on the bus was too dim for him to be able to read. He wore a leather aviation cap with the earflaps down; he had been bald for years, and although he wore a toupee his head always felt cold on these frosty mornings. Now over his aviation cap he fitted a miner's headlamp -- strapped around the back of his head, with a huge light projecting from his forehead.
When I was living in Paris I had a 20 min ride from home to work each day. I picked up the habit to read during those 40 total minutes and I was going through books like I had never been able to, because while 40 min is not a lot, it’s about 150h per year. One easily underestimates the power of consistency.
I read many books a year by reading for 20-30 minutes per night before sleeping. A habit with multiple benefits (winding down and reading or commuting and reading) is very powerful for getting the most value out of your time.
I commute to the office 1-3 times a week, it's about 30 minutes on the train + some walking.
I've gone through so many books it's crazy :)
With audiobooks I can start listening the second I step out of the door and stop while I take my jacket off in the office. With e-books I usually just read on the train.
Most books aren't that long, around 5 hours a week of reading just during your commutes is quite a bit.
For one year I read every free moment averaged a book every 3 days mostly biographies many on wrestling. The year I got an e-reader (alura tech). Stopped after the screen broke.
I used to do work on Caltrain, which used to be like 3 hours of my commute and didn't have any internet, so I would carefully plan what I could do beforehand. My code deploys to a machine that's very different from my laptop, but I had a Docker container set up to cross compile things and loaded up the docs beforehand, so as long as I planned out what I wanted to do.
These days Caltrain is faster and has occasionally frustrating, but fairly good Wi-Fi, so now my constraints are that I don't have a large monitor but not really much else.
Many years ago, before mobile internet was reasonable and before wireless internet was available, and before even electrical outlets were something which could be counted on to be present on trains, I took a 6 hour train ride. I had no laptop. I printed out, on paper, the entire source code of the project I was working on, and brought a red pen. Many subtle bug fixes, refactorings, and efficiency improvements were made that day.
> they would have to do it at a station, where they could immediately get off the train. I think, though, that this would be risky, given that subway stops generally have a lot of people getting on/off the train in the first place.
I've seen a phone jacking in this exact scenario and nobody moved to stop the guy running. Nobody on the train can help cause the doors have closed, and nobody on the platform has any idea anything just happened, or if they do the guy is well gone before they can put two and two together.
For me I always pocket my phone or e-reader at each stop, unless I'm in Japan or Taiwan.
I wonder what you could usefully do with a Kensington lock on the train. I bought one for use in cafés although I haven't used it most of the time.
You could attach it to something bulkier or something that you could put under the seat, maybe. I don't remember if New York subway seats have an exposed bar underneath that you could lock it to. I'm sure locking it to the vertical poles in the center of the car would be extremely antisocial.
True, but a laptop is much more of a hassle to quickly grab and run with than a phone.
What also helps is having one that's full of stickers or overall looks fairly (ab)used. A pristine MacBook is going to be much more of a target than a random ThinkPad with a sticker, greasy keyboard and 20 scratches.
Depends on where and when you are. Some hyped up dude is fixated on the next fix and lacks the executive function to discriminate. The more professional thieves are more discriminating.
There’s probably no market for it, but it might be interesting to make a MacBook case/cover and/or stickers that make it look old, cracked, scratched, and dirty.
It would be interesting to see if that would deter a thief.
I was in Philadelphia for a week and also used my commute time (2 hours in total each day) to program. As a web developer who uses Github Copilot and often checks documentation online, I did not have such a good experience as OP had. Mobile data is pretty much nonexistent in Philadelphia in the subway and there are also no wifi Hotspots.
Sure, it was better than nothing, but I would quite often find myself waiting for the subway to arrive at stations and hoping that there is at least some internet connectivity there.
Did this for a couple years on a 45 minute CTA commute in Chicago while I was learning to code outside my day job, it honestly made that commute not even feel burdensome. Key was that I was 1.) on the brown line, which was still running the 3200-series cars with plentiful seats, and 2.) at an early enough stop to reliably get one. And can confirm an old Thinkpad (x220 at the time) is the king of commute coding.
My entire stack is meant to let me work offline in random locations. Until recently it was meant to run smoothly on a 12" Macbook. The output is also made for users on spotty internet connections. This comes from years of working while travelling. I can work offline for weeks if needed.
I sometimes do "iPad work", which is essentially researching, reviewing and annotating content on my iPad Mini. I will hop on my bike and work an hour or two in different locations, over coffee or in the sun. It's a relaxing break from working on a computer at a desk.
I do think that people should work in different places. Perhaps we'd have apps that work better on slow internet.
I developed a big chunk of my Scumm games decompiler in London's central line. I was lucky (or unlucky) enough to go far enough each day to always hand an empty seat and enjoy 30 minutes of me time each way.
All on a Chromebook with crostini. Cheap, long battery life and decent keyboard.
I love to program on my commute. When I took NJ Transit bus, when I took NY Ferry, when I took MetroNorth.
But I’ve never felt comfortable opening a laptop on the NYC subway. It wasn’t about the safety that OP describes. It was about the culture and the physical configuration (facing middle with strap hangers vs facing front/back). It just didn’t feel right in the subway.
I do miss the MetroNorth Bar Car! I could drink and code and it was jovial.
I used to get so much done on my BART commute. Also learned piano on a little 25 key midi keyboard until the program I was learning from started needing a 26th key.
I used an Akai LPK25 with my iPhone (using the Camera Connection Kit and a combined usb hub/dac) and an app called Simply Piano. They make a wireless version of that now that would simplify the setup a great deal. It is a mini keyboard and the keys are quite small, but in my experience it was fine for the beginner stuff (and the keyboard is useful in general later). As I said before, I stuck with this until the app started using keys outside the range I had.
Now, as for "did I proceed with more serious learning" - I alternate though a ton of hobbies. So I moved on after that, though still go back to it from time to time. But I also have other musical interests and it was helpful to those as well.
Also did a lot of music on the commute on my iPhone with Korg Gadget (and Caustic before that). Sometimes with a keyboard, sometimes without.
I’ve done this before, but you need a relatively long subway ride without any transfers. IMO, 30 minutes is just barely at the edge of being worthwhile, and only if you can get a seat right when you get on, and only if the seat isn’t so cramped that it’s actually possible to get your laptop out of your bag. This happens rarely.
But on longer trips from e.g. upper Manhattan to deep Brooklyn, particularly at off-peak hours when I have room to spread out—yeah, I’ve had some very productive sessions.
I have always enjoyed it. I have even gotten comments "can you really do anything in such a short period of time" but i have found that even 20 min sessions on a commute can be effective. For a major project I did the final push on such a commute just hoping the push could complete before the train reached the tunnel without coverage, and it did
I've done it a few times on city busses which I'd say are worse than subway. Less legroom, bumpier ride, more people passing by. My 13" laptop barely fit.
It's not something I'd want to do on the daily but if you really need to get something done and are running out of time (those busses get stuck in traffic for half an hour or more), it's doable.
Not often, and not recommended, but I have coded on the cockpit table while single-handing a sailboat. Interrupting a conference call with “sorry, one moment, I have to tack out of the fleet” is its own special joy.
Reminds me of this metafilter thread [0] where people asked/shared less usual work locations. Hotel lobbies are a great one, as have laundromats sometimes been in the past.
An intercity train with wifi/cell service (and tea!) is an incredible focussing function as well. You got 3 hours and a beautiful not too distracting view. Go!
P.s. I also suggested to Stephen that he gets a Nathan Fielder “laptop harness” for his subway work..? Has anyone tried this?
Eh. My preferred subway activity is to listen to music and stare at the ground. I don't know... do I really need to stare at my computer screen every waking moment?
With coding agents AI almost never manually type code anymore. It would be great to have a code editor that runs on my phone so I can do voice prompts and let the coding agents type stuff for me.
I have been doing this with GitHub's copilot agent web interface on my phone; word-vomit voice prompt + instructions to always run the tests or take screenshots so I can evaluate the change works really well.
I recently bought a GPD MicroPC 2, a 7” laptop with a real keyboard. It runs Linux just fine, and it has been a fun experience of having a “real” computer with me much more often than I otherwise would. My version of programming on the subway has been programming on a park bench—it fits in a jacket pocket, or even the back pocket of some of my pants. The keyboard is tiny but easy enough to use with thumbs, or, with some practice, two-handed touch typing on a flat surface.
It’s nice to be less tethered to a desk, while also not having to carry a backpack and heavier full laptop, but still able to remote in and do what I need to do. I really enjoy having a fully capable Linux PC in my pocket vs a smartphone.
Here is a description of the daily commute by Michael Milken, 1980s junk bond king, as told in "Predator's Ball" by Connie Bruck:
At 5:30am each weekday in the early 1970s, a bus pulled up to a stop in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and a young man lugging a bag that bulged with papers mounted its steps. He was making the two-hour commute to New York City, where he worked at the investment banking firm of Drexel Firestone. The train would have provided a more comfortable and faster ride; but, for those very reasons, it also offered more opportunity to meet other Wall Street acquaintances. They would want to engage in the kind of idle small talk that commuters share to pass the time. The thought must have been intolerable. He did not wish to be rude, but he wanted no interruption.
As soon as he had settled into his seat, being sure to take one with an empty one adjacent, he unloaded a mountain of prospectuses and 10ks (annual Securities and Exchange Commission filings) onto the seat next to him. On winter mornings the sky was still pitch black and the light on the bus was too dim for him to be able to read. He wore a leather aviation cap with the earflaps down; he had been bald for years, and although he wore a toupee his head always felt cold on these frosty mornings. Now over his aviation cap he fitted a miner's headlamp -- strapped around the back of his head, with a huge light projecting from his forehead.
Why am I not surprised when I read that to find this:
> Milken was born into a middle-class[12][13] Jewish family in Encino, California.[14]
These fucking weirdos lmao
When I was living in Paris I had a 20 min ride from home to work each day. I picked up the habit to read during those 40 total minutes and I was going through books like I had never been able to, because while 40 min is not a lot, it’s about 150h per year. One easily underestimates the power of consistency.
I read many books a year by reading for 20-30 minutes per night before sleeping. A habit with multiple benefits (winding down and reading or commuting and reading) is very powerful for getting the most value out of your time.
I commute to the office 1-3 times a week, it's about 30 minutes on the train + some walking.
I've gone through so many books it's crazy :)
With audiobooks I can start listening the second I step out of the door and stop while I take my jacket off in the office. With e-books I usually just read on the train.
Most books aren't that long, around 5 hours a week of reading just during your commutes is quite a bit.
For one year I read every free moment averaged a book every 3 days mostly biographies many on wrestling. The year I got an e-reader (alura tech). Stopped after the screen broke.
The book that stood out the most. Sugar Barons.
I used to do work on Caltrain, which used to be like 3 hours of my commute and didn't have any internet, so I would carefully plan what I could do beforehand. My code deploys to a machine that's very different from my laptop, but I had a Docker container set up to cross compile things and loaded up the docs beforehand, so as long as I planned out what I wanted to do.
These days Caltrain is faster and has occasionally frustrating, but fairly good Wi-Fi, so now my constraints are that I don't have a large monitor but not really much else.
Many years ago, before mobile internet was reasonable and before wireless internet was available, and before even electrical outlets were something which could be counted on to be present on trains, I took a 6 hour train ride. I had no laptop. I printed out, on paper, the entire source code of the project I was working on, and brought a red pen. Many subtle bug fixes, refactorings, and efficiency improvements were made that day.
> they would have to do it at a station, where they could immediately get off the train. I think, though, that this would be risky, given that subway stops generally have a lot of people getting on/off the train in the first place.
I've seen a phone jacking in this exact scenario and nobody moved to stop the guy running. Nobody on the train can help cause the doors have closed, and nobody on the platform has any idea anything just happened, or if they do the guy is well gone before they can put two and two together.
For me I always pocket my phone or e-reader at each stop, unless I'm in Japan or Taiwan.
I wonder what you could usefully do with a Kensington lock on the train. I bought one for use in cafés although I haven't used it most of the time.
You could attach it to something bulkier or something that you could put under the seat, maybe. I don't remember if New York subway seats have an exposed bar underneath that you could lock it to. I'm sure locking it to the vertical poles in the center of the car would be extremely antisocial.
True, but a laptop is much more of a hassle to quickly grab and run with than a phone.
What also helps is having one that's full of stickers or overall looks fairly (ab)used. A pristine MacBook is going to be much more of a target than a random ThinkPad with a sticker, greasy keyboard and 20 scratches.
Depends on where and when you are. Some hyped up dude is fixated on the next fix and lacks the executive function to discriminate. The more professional thieves are more discriminating.
I agree that it’s just a matter of when it’s stolen, not if it’s going to be stolen.
The article suggests the laptop is about $300, and he uses it about 1hr/day.
If the laptop is stolen less than once a year he spends less than $1/hr for coding on the go, which I would consider a fair deal.
There’s probably no market for it, but it might be interesting to make a MacBook case/cover and/or stickers that make it look old, cracked, scratched, and dirty.
It would be interesting to see if that would deter a thief.
Reminds me of the old SNL sketch: https://streamable.com/m7omz
I was in Philadelphia for a week and also used my commute time (2 hours in total each day) to program. As a web developer who uses Github Copilot and often checks documentation online, I did not have such a good experience as OP had. Mobile data is pretty much nonexistent in Philadelphia in the subway and there are also no wifi Hotspots. Sure, it was better than nothing, but I would quite often find myself waiting for the subway to arrive at stations and hoping that there is at least some internet connectivity there.
> I don't even have an internet connection.
Vibe coders feeling a great disturbance in the force.
Not immediately of course, you have to wait until the robots are trained on this blogpost.
Nomophobia is the word for that lol
Did this for a couple years on a 45 minute CTA commute in Chicago while I was learning to code outside my day job, it honestly made that commute not even feel burdensome. Key was that I was 1.) on the brown line, which was still running the 3200-series cars with plentiful seats, and 2.) at an early enough stop to reliably get one. And can confirm an old Thinkpad (x220 at the time) is the king of commute coding.
My entire stack is meant to let me work offline in random locations. Until recently it was meant to run smoothly on a 12" Macbook. The output is also made for users on spotty internet connections. This comes from years of working while travelling. I can work offline for weeks if needed.
I sometimes do "iPad work", which is essentially researching, reviewing and annotating content on my iPad Mini. I will hop on my bike and work an hour or two in different locations, over coffee or in the sun. It's a relaxing break from working on a computer at a desk.
I do think that people should work in different places. Perhaps we'd have apps that work better on slow internet.
[delayed]
I developed a big chunk of my Scumm games decompiler in London's central line. I was lucky (or unlucky) enough to go far enough each day to always hand an empty seat and enjoy 30 minutes of me time each way.
All on a Chromebook with crostini. Cheap, long battery life and decent keyboard.
I love to program on my commute. When I took NJ Transit bus, when I took NY Ferry, when I took MetroNorth.
But I’ve never felt comfortable opening a laptop on the NYC subway. It wasn’t about the safety that OP describes. It was about the culture and the physical configuration (facing middle with strap hangers vs facing front/back). It just didn’t feel right in the subway.
I do miss the MetroNorth Bar Car! I could drink and code and it was jovial.
I used to get so much done on my BART commute. Also learned piano on a little 25 key midi keyboard until the program I was learning from started needing a 26th key.
That's so cool. Can you share more about this. What program and keyboard did you use? Did you proceed with more serious learning?
I used an Akai LPK25 with my iPhone (using the Camera Connection Kit and a combined usb hub/dac) and an app called Simply Piano. They make a wireless version of that now that would simplify the setup a great deal. It is a mini keyboard and the keys are quite small, but in my experience it was fine for the beginner stuff (and the keyboard is useful in general later). As I said before, I stuck with this until the app started using keys outside the range I had.
Now, as for "did I proceed with more serious learning" - I alternate though a ton of hobbies. So I moved on after that, though still go back to it from time to time. But I also have other musical interests and it was helpful to those as well.
Also did a lot of music on the commute on my iPhone with Korg Gadget (and Caustic before that). Sometimes with a keyboard, sometimes without.
I used to get frustated that the train shook so loud that in combination with the sound of the train I struggled to listen to podcasts, kudos to you.
I sometimes would bring ear-protection headphones that I'd wear over my earbuds to muffle the train noise.
I’ve done this before, but you need a relatively long subway ride without any transfers. IMO, 30 minutes is just barely at the edge of being worthwhile, and only if you can get a seat right when you get on, and only if the seat isn’t so cramped that it’s actually possible to get your laptop out of your bag. This happens rarely.
But on longer trips from e.g. upper Manhattan to deep Brooklyn, particularly at off-peak hours when I have room to spread out—yeah, I’ve had some very productive sessions.
I have always enjoyed it. I have even gotten comments "can you really do anything in such a short period of time" but i have found that even 20 min sessions on a commute can be effective. For a major project I did the final push on such a commute just hoping the push could complete before the train reached the tunnel without coverage, and it did
I've done it a few times on city busses which I'd say are worse than subway. Less legroom, bumpier ride, more people passing by. My 13" laptop barely fit.
It's not something I'd want to do on the daily but if you really need to get something done and are running out of time (those busses get stuck in traffic for half an hour or more), it's doable.
Back in the 80s I would work on stacks of fanfold code printouts on my trips on the London underground to and from work
I love making money for my employer with every spare moment of my life.
Do your work today and tomorrow you can fool around and have some fun. Do the minimum today so you can do the maximum tomorrow rarely makes sense.
If you took the time to read the first paragraph instead of typing this snarky comment, you'd know he's working on his personal projects.
I work/program on CalTrain but that’s pretty common. NYC subway or BART seems a bit more challenging.
It’s overall time much better spent than being stuck in a car.
Not often, and not recommended, but I have coded on the cockpit table while single-handing a sailboat. Interrupting a conference call with “sorry, one moment, I have to tack out of the fleet” is its own special joy.
With some noise cancelling headphones, it may actually help with focus. I'm a fan of doing things on the subway.
Reminds me of this metafilter thread [0] where people asked/shared less usual work locations. Hotel lobbies are a great one, as have laundromats sometimes been in the past.
An intercity train with wifi/cell service (and tea!) is an incredible focussing function as well. You got 3 hours and a beautiful not too distracting view. Go!
P.s. I also suggested to Stephen that he gets a Nathan Fielder “laptop harness” for his subway work..? Has anyone tried this?
[0] https://ask.metafilter.com/316039/Ideas-for-workspaces-pleas...
> Between work, meetups, and social events, I have noticeably less time for side projects than I had before moving here.
Lucky you. :) Good problem to have.
Eh. My preferred subway activity is to listen to music and stare at the ground. I don't know... do I really need to stare at my computer screen every waking moment?
With coding agents AI almost never manually type code anymore. It would be great to have a code editor that runs on my phone so I can do voice prompts and let the coding agents type stuff for me.
That sounds awful
Similar to a product or engineering manager giving directions on a call from the golf course.
Golf course isn't bad; I witnessed a CEO join meetings from the subway and packed airport concourses lol
Early in my career I drew the short straw to fetch a C level exec who was running a critical incident from a strip club and too drunk to drive.
I had to pay the $90 three drink minimum to get in. Getting that reimbursed was fun.
But hey, look how productive they are with their time! :)
I have been doing this with GitHub's copilot agent web interface on my phone; word-vomit voice prompt + instructions to always run the tests or take screenshots so I can evaluate the change works really well.
Claude does this, at least on an iPhone. They added Code to the app about a month ago. I used it to get a Pebble Watch project started.