I've been doing this for 8 years now. First mostly in south america, then since 2006 in asia, mostly in China.
The first few years were fine - I enjoyed being in a totally different place. But eventually I missed having other hackers around. My social life took place mostly online.
So far, experiences from that are:
-people differ in so many ways- it's hard to find a group that works together.
-some people take the day-to-day distractions better than others. Some thrive by being able to got for a swim whenever they want, some get restless and can't get work done
-our location may be a bit too extreme (we're off the grid on an island in the caribbean, solar + long distance wifi link from town)
Connectivity has improved a lot.. When I started in 2001, writing web apps in Java, my makefile included a target for copying the code to a floppy disk, and adding pscp.exe a .bat file to upload everything to the server so my client could test it. Bugs would come in the form of long emails.
Definitely much better now... ssh is sometimes a problem, but now even getting through the Great Firewall of China with ssh is alright.
Overall, I can really recommend trying this out. I'd very much like to contribute my thoughts and experiences to someone willing to build a community around this... I'm not enough of a community builder and too busy with work to do this by myself. Contact me ([email protected]) if interested!
The first few years were fine - I enjoyed being in a totally different place. But eventually I missed having other hackers around. My social life took place mostly online.
Earlier this year I finally launched
http://www.cocovivo.com
So far, experiences from that are: -people differ in so many ways- it's hard to find a group that works together. -some people take the day-to-day distractions better than others. Some thrive by being able to got for a swim whenever they want, some get restless and can't get work done -our location may be a bit too extreme (we're off the grid on an island in the caribbean, solar + long distance wifi link from town)
Connectivity has improved a lot.. When I started in 2001, writing web apps in Java, my makefile included a target for copying the code to a floppy disk, and adding pscp.exe a .bat file to upload everything to the server so my client could test it. Bugs would come in the form of long emails.
Definitely much better now... ssh is sometimes a problem, but now even getting through the Great Firewall of China with ssh is alright.
Overall, I can really recommend trying this out. I'd very much like to contribute my thoughts and experiences to someone willing to build a community around this... I'm not enough of a community builder and too busy with work to do this by myself. Contact me ([email protected]) if interested!