this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2025
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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.

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[–] Chef_Boyardee@lemm.ee 27 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 4 points 6 days ago

Why do you think the net was born?

Porn Porn Porn

[–] kSPvhmTOlwvMd7Y7E@lemmy.world 19 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I never play, i always code.. And i am not even that good at it 😢

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

Practice makes perfect!

[–] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 5 days ago

I'm a recreational coder first and foremost. Sometimes I play games, but rarely all the way through

[–] Nollij@sopuli.xyz 16 points 6 days ago

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.

[–] moseschrute@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago
[–] MITM0@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)
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[–] Underwaterbob@lemm.ee 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Audio! I'm a hobbyist musician.

Gaming is a close second.

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

That reminds me, for a long time I've had an idea for a piece of instrumental music that would be the intro to a video. I'm not a musician but used to play the piano a little. I do have a little synthesizer keyboard from when my kids were young. If I noodled out a melody on that and recorded it, is there software I could use to make it sound like multiple instruments, add drum effects etc. so it sounds real? I don't know if there's a musical term for doing that - flesh it out?

[–] Wahots@pawb.social 3 points 5 days ago

I use mine mostly for work. But also games, music, and movies.

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago

I spend a lot more time coding than playing games. It's not unusual for me to not be active on steam for a month.

[–] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 8 points 6 days ago

I don't game very much (just recently I started playing outer wilds though a few times per week). I feel like I probably enjoy tweaking my laptop more than actually using it.😆 I dont even code much. I like finding open source alternatives to software and generally improve my laptop. Spent about 4months learning nixos:)

I don't know, at least I might be able to help others improve their pc's too

[–] COASTER1921@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 days ago

No games here, I never have found them interesting for whatever reason. Because of this my laptop is a 2018 Chromebook with reflashed BIOS running Ubuntu. It has significantly less processing power than my phone but is plenty sufficient for everything I ever need a computer to do.

[–] Hadriscus@lemm.ee 4 points 6 days ago

I do 3D animation and illustration. Fortunately, running games requires the exact same kind of hardware so my workstation doubles as a playstation

[–] anomnom@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 days ago

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).

[–] jadedwench@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

I mostly use mine to program. I started gaming again after barely playing them for a decade, but that is not my computer's primary purpose. Otherwise, I do dumb online browsing, play D&D with friends (used to...), fiddle around with art (mostly do that on iPad), 3d printing or electronics related things. Random shit like that.

[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 6 days ago

Hmm it's difficult to quantify. On workday I spend an average of probably 6-8 hours on a computer with job related tasks. Not really coding most of the time, since we're maintaining and building a network, so it's more configuration, planning, coordination, and documentation work. Some days we're out to actually deploy hardware, or run around and debug stuff, so it's hard to estimate the average screentime.

My free time involves a lot of computer time too, but it is split up into more smaller categories, either on the desktop computer or the smartphone computer. Manga, Games, Youtube, Movies, Anime Series, Lemmy, Pornography, News, Banking and Investments.

In the end I think my job is the biggest unified chunk of time, but that's kind of arbitrary, if I started subdividing it into different tasks maybe gaming would become the biggest chunk.

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

Technically for me it's work now

I have games installed but I mostly just write programs for fun now. I usually don't get a ton of time to play games, plus they haven't been as fun as they used to be as a kid.

[–] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 4 points 6 days ago

I still game on my desktop. But it's never been the primary use.

Graphic Design, video editing, 3D modelling, etc... has been the reason for my upgrades over the years. The fact that each of those upgrades allowed my games to perform better was a side-effect instead of being the primary reason.

[–] Smokeydope@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

I still play games but now I have more things to do with computers. I started helping out an open source software project learning how to code basic things in lua, how to contribute using git pushes. make art texture graphics in gimp, mess with sound effects in audacity, clip videos together using kdenlive. I hope to learn how to use blender and do modeling. I test and review fellow devs stuff to try helping them out. As long as I learn new things and contribute it helps me feel like my computer time is more productive.

Then I got in on the local LLM scene a year ago with the release of llama 3.1. I'm a science nerd who genuinely thinks the study of neural networks is cool. The idea of getting computers to simulate thoughts to help solve problems is a neat thing. Also I wanted to see how far we came from cleverbot days. It inspired me enough to dig out the old unused gaming desktop and really extract the most potential out of my old 1070ti.

Now I wish I had more vram not for chasing high end graphics in video game entertainment, but because I want my computer to simulate high quality thoughts to help me in daily life.

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[–] Canopyflyer@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago (5 children)

54M here. Rolled my first D&D character in 1978. Played GURPS, Twighlight 2000, Traveller, you name it I probably have at least dabbled in playing it.

Today I play D&D 2024 and 5e, Call of Cthulhu, Castles and Crusades and a few others. Some on Roll20, or Foundry VTT (which is awesome BTW.) My primary gaming group is all fathers and mothers spread out across the country.

As far as actual Computer games, I used to be into Flight Sims, but dropping $500 plus on JUST a graphics card is just not something that is going to happen. It's not the wife acceptance factor, it the sheer balls the graphics card manufacturers have charging that much for their crap. I still dust off MS FS 2004 and run it on my Dell Precision laptop, but my machine won't run the latest version. I would like to see if it would run Battlestar Galactica Deadlock though.

Otherwise, I have had a home server for many years. It runs Proxmox and I have containers running Plex, Homeseer, SMB (acts as my NAS), and it provides backup services for every other computer in the house.

For reference, I am an IT Professional, with about 30 years in the business.

[–] 3dmvr@lemm.ee 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

gpu prices are wild, I think amds better ones are not too bad tho and can run vr flight sims fine, winwig dropped a good cheap (around 100$) my issue is warthundes the only arcadey pvp option, their next game might be good tho, I really want s good flight sim game to hop on and off, treat like cod, drop into a city to close quarter dog fight or be what I thought war thunder was (a massive war with servers for different eras you can drop in as any vehicle type lol, I was delusional)

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[–] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 1 points 5 days ago

Anyway I'm just wondering how common it is to use computers more for coding and other technical non-game stuff.

I'd estimate gaming is <5% of my use, probably lower.on my PC

Id say maybe <10% on my phone

I have no console. I had a WiiU as my last one and sold it during Covid as I never iswed it.

Have been thinking aboit a Steam Deck

Am old as fcuk, used to wrote my own games in machine code on my Commodore 64.

[–] ArsonButCute@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago

I use an HTPC that happens to be powerful enough to be a gaming PC, I also have a media server facing the internet for use on the go.

Most of my pc use nowadays is for media consumption and analog to digital conversion for backups (VHS to HDD and eventually M-Disc for long term storage).

I do a bit of emulation, most of that is done with an ARM handheld PC but it's an SP form factor and I don't really think it counts. I do a bit of PS2 emulation as well on my HTPC but mostly just to verify good rips of my physical games which I have backed up.

[–] andrewta@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

Mainly gaming but if I’m looking things up online and need multiple tabs. I won’t use mobile. Mobile sucks ass for that.

Multiple tabs and two monitors makes things much easier to do research.

Spreadsheet work for my business… on mobile?

I’m crazy not stupid.

[–] sleepmode@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

I mostly use my Mac for business stuff, art and coding. The PC spends most of its time on offloaded AI tasks and rendering jobs. It was originally a toy for gaming but I’d rather use my Steam Deck for that now.

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