Having done over 25 yrs , the creativity of it, finding elegant solutions to problems, satisfaction of taming a spaghetti code mess and cleaning it up , learning arcane uber-geeky ways of doing things and amusing others with these tricks, intellectual satisfaction / keeping the brain in shape, having colleagues with good senses of humour and lively minds, (particularly the delightfully twisted silly jokes/banter people come up with after spending hours on weird abstract problems that are incomprehensible to most people) overall relatively low stress (compared to other jobs that pay the same) way to keep a family fed :).
Ask HN: Software devs with 10 years experience, what do you still love about it?
11–20 of 56 posts
Re: Ask HN: Software devs with 10 years experience, what do you still love about it?
#12For me, I notice that I get most engrossed in the code when there's a problem and I need to figure out how to solve it.
Re: Ask HN: Software devs with 10 years experience, what do you still love about it?
#13I can't imagine not programming... what, am I going to do things manually like a cave man?
Re: Ask HN: Software devs with 10 years experience, what do you still love about it?
#14I'm hitting 10 years now and 10 years feels like nothing. I can't believe I used to look up to people with 10 years of experience because now I can see how many and how large are the gaps in knowledge I still have!
But I think the work stuff gets easier and it also becomes easier to explore random fun topics like retro devices and internals of compilers, databases, browsers, etc. Not that you couldn't do those explorations with fewer years of experience (you can) but it just takes me a bit less time to dig into things now.
I guess I've gotten much better at slogging through documentation and reading existing code (that I didn't write).
Re: Ask HN: Software devs with 10 years experience, what do you still love about it?
#15The excitement between successful compilation and running a program -- only to find out that it emits a stream of nonsense to the console instead of the answer you expect: but that's no problem, ctrl-c and back to the code.
The satisfaction of opening a perfectly-tuned merge request with a minimal diff and glowing momentarily to yourself as tests all begin to pass (before realizing that there's an embarrassing typo in the title text).
The feel-good factor from optimizing runtime and energy usage for your most prized simulation library (despite the fact that it's only used by yourself and perhaps one other egg avatar who starred your repository).
The endless mental battle against an onslaught of awful, awful code and technology decisions from employers and the Internet, yet paired with evident continued emergence of more reliable, higher quality and more freely available and equitable tools over time. And being able to participate in all that in a small way.
Re: Ask HN: Software devs with 10 years experience, what do you still love about it?
#16Good question. I have 10 years of professional experience under my belt now. 10 years before that, from the age of 10 I was spending 100% of my free time playing with and learning programming languages.
I think an important piece to this puzzle lies in not getting attached to one specific field of application.
Worked for about 3 years in a regular run-of-the-mill agency / website shop. Not very interesting, but good experience and skills gained.
Worked for about 2-3 years in ecommerce. EXCRUCIATING. Left with little to no appreciation left for the craft, fell into a crisis of meaning. Allowed myself to be unemployed for a while and found appreciation again.
Worked for about 1-2 years freelance. Very cool projects, but I couldnt take the constant stress of dealing with clients and managing moneyflow. Stopped.
Now I've been building a venture with a business partner of mine for about one year, which has somehow completely evolved and changed into effectively managing the technical side of a quantitative analysis firm that runs a NYSE-listed Hedgefond. INCREDIBLE. Every day feels like christmas, noone to answer to, 100% decision force on anything, and not even involved with the regular operations, just dreaming up cool new algorithms and ideas for our internal system all day. But this, too, I might leave some day.
I truly believe that a programmer is not a static definition especially given the insane influx of data and new concepts we process every day, and that the only way to truly find ourselves in it is to not get attached to anything.
The zen programmer, so to speak. Code is not limited to anything. Become the code, not the job description
Re: Ask HN: Software devs with 10 years experience, what do you still love about it?
#17I can make stuff that has never existed before.
I can make stuff that changes businesses.
I can make stuff that changes lives.
I do this with my mind, with no raw materials.
My ideas and time are the only limits.
How could someone with creative fire not love this?
Re: Ask HN: Software devs with 10 years experience, what do you still love about it?
#18I've always been attracted and antagonized by the recurring theme of irrationality just below the surface of all of this. I've never thought of myself as a "coder" but as someone who engineers how people think about problems. I just end up coding because I guess I love sideshows and amateur burlesque. My father was a shrink. He was fond of (among other books) _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Mechanics_. Are you seeing how this is going? I took out a display ad in the back of (print) _Computer World_ which said "VAX Hacker for Hire", in 1984.
Re: Ask HN: Software devs with 10 years experience, what do you still love about it?
#19this is actually quite hard to define for me.
it's something about having the creative freedom to decide on the solution to a problem, and then also the satisfaction of building it out into something which works, works well and then benefits others.
along that path of [requirements -> design -> implement -> test -> release] there are numerous rewarding moments but when the whole thing comes together, there's another meta-reward of knowing that there now exists something where there was not before, and that I created that thing. Quite often, entirely.
Another level of this, is satisfaction in colleagues taking components/services/entire systems I've constructed and adapting, extending, changing them to do more than I thought possible. Also, seeing colleagues start their own components/services/systems in the pattern/design of something I did, and making a success of it.
After a while, it's like seeing an entire ecosystem spring up around seeds I created.
However, to translate that into what it really is - the team I work with manages to build an actually useful product that real people use and enjoy using. I find that highly rewarding.
Re: Ask HN: Software devs with 10 years experience, what do you still love about it?
#20I have around a decade of experience.
- I love solving problems. It's like solving puzzles as your day job; it's great!
- I love getting exposed to various domains, when building software for it. There's also the added benefit that I usually have domain experts getting paid to explain stuff to me.
- I love building stuff that other people use. There's something very good for the soul when you see something you contributed to solving real world issues.
- I love the fact that I was involved in building systems that save lives.
- I don't really see myself doing anything else and being happy.
- Don't even get me started on building games / engines, basically being able to be your own mini-god.