Is browsing "Personal Sites" (like the Dope) on your break at work poor etiquette?

If you couldn’t come up with the right phrasing, then perhaps you need more downtime too! :slight_smile:

Same here. It is important to let your subconscious work on things, and doing something totally different does this. I write a chunk of code, set what the next one should do in my mind, browse the Dope, and then go back to my editor window and write the next chunk fully formed.
I will go for a walk to the shopping center across the street if I’m really stuck, but that takes 20 minutes and I can look at the Dope for five - plus stop whenever I see the answer.

Assuming you are getting your work done, worrying about overusing company computers is only reasonable if you are in a time warp and using an old mainframe where you get charged by the minute. I do compute intensive stuff, and one run with a buggy program wastes more compute resources than I can do personally in a year.

I see no one’s brought up the obvious yet, what if surfing the Dope is part of your job? And don’t say it can’t be, because it is for me.

That’s right, y’all make my job easier.

I browse personal sites all the time at work and no one blinks. The boss does this too. The more errands and entertainment I can get in at work, the more time I can spend there. I also use the refrigerator and microwave for personal meals. When I’m up all night running kinetics experiments on the NMR spectrometer I’ll watch movies while I work up the data. That way I can pull a 30 hour workday, have 5 meals, and get a few hours of entertainment in, all without wasting travel time or putzing around at home where I can’t get work done.