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Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?

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Re: Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?

#131

Post by the_only_law »

jon-wood wrote: post #39

Don’t beat yourself up, there’s this weird belief in the programming world that to be good you have to have a deep passion for it, and want to spend every waking moment writing software and loving it. I can’t think of many careers that have that sort of pathology. You don’t hear about accountants doing books to unwind after a hard day at work, or removal men loading boxes into a truck as a hobby. I think a lot of it…

I just wish I could go back and do things differently. Ideally I'd have go into some other filed that's still interesting, pays relatively well and keep programming as a hobby.

Re: Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?

#132

Post by the_only_law »

didip wrote: post #105

The most pragmatic advice is to hang in there, create and reach your FIRE goal, and then quit and do your most passionate hobbies.

How does this work, as far as I understand FIRE targets typically have you making less than you did doing wage work. Typically enough to live moderately comfortable and support any family you might have. Hobbies can get expensive.

Re: Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?

#133

Post by cultus »

Argish wrote: post #9
cultus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of sounds like depression or anxiety, which most everyone has to some extent now. Loss of interest in normal activities is a key symptom. I've heard that mental health professionals are still trying to figure out how much to pathologize the very bad but mostly normal responses people are having to 2020. Everyone that's having issues should talk to their doctor and/or see a therapist. They know what they are…

You can also buy a motorcycle. It's cheaper that therapists in the long term.

Most people only need therapy for a few months. Very few need long-term therapy.

Re: Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?

#134

Post by balabaster »

agency wrote: post #50
balabaster wrote: post #5

This sounds like the beginnings of burnout or depression... do you find joy in anything else? Does anything motivate you? I went through this for about 3 years after my divorce. I couldn't find motivation or joy in anything. I turned to helping other people solve their problems because at least I was helping others to get through what I couldn't figure out how to get through myself. There was a lot of time spent in r…

I’m in a similar boat myself. I told myself I didn’t have any energy for things outside of work because of my job, though I never found the workload that overwhelming. I could get lost in the puzzle of the technical work and I’m good at it, but I ultimately found the work to be meaningless. At some point enterprise SaaS feels so abstract that even if in some sense it’s improving the world (helping companies work more…

Finding peace in the day-to-day is a great way to find your way back to a good place. Allow yourself to do anything or nothing at all and not feel guilty about not being productive or even checking stuff off your to-do list. In fact, look at your to-do list and ask yourself if it's critical to your existence or happiness. If it doesn't bring you joy or ensure your continued existence - i.e. pays the bills, delete it from the list.

Re: Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?

#135

Post by leesec »

giantg2 wrote: post #123
JSavageOne wrote: post #20

I personally think 90+% of the work in this industry is very boring. At this point many will say "well why are you working in this industry then"? Well I tried the alternatives, and they were way worse. I need money to survive in this world, and programming gives me the best bang for my buck. Most other industries require working longer hours doing less interesting work making less money with less freedom. If it's re…

Longer hours than IT? It seems the industry is known for working long hours to meet deadlines and of course on-call schedules.

My job before coding was working 12 hour days, 30 days at a time on a cement tug and barge. I'm never going back. I'll take all the on call you can give me.

Re: Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?

#136

Post by giantg2 »

leesec wrote: post #135
giantg2 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Longer hours than IT? It seems the industry is known for working long hours to meet deadlines and of course on-call schedules.

My job before coding was working 12 hour days, 30 days at a time on a cement tug and barge. I'm never going back. I'll take all the on call you can give me.

I know tech leads who consistently work 11 hour days. Different kind of work though.

Were you hourly?

Re: Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?

#137

Post by OldHand2018 »

As a completely out-of-left-field suggestion, the next time you have a routine doctor visit, ask for a parathyroid hormone test. It's a cheap and quick blood test. This is probably not your issue, but if it's out of whack, that could easily explain your feelings. And it's fixable.

Re: Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?

#138

Post by nicbou »

I lost interest in programming until about two years ago, when I went freelance. My first (and last) contract involved knowing how to code, but no actual coding. After a few weeks, I started coding in my spare time again. It wasn't to keep myself employable. It just scratched an itch.

Now, I live from a website I built, and coding became one of my favourite hobbies again. I wake up, make pancakes, have coffee, put some good music on, and code until I've had enough. It's not work; it's my definition of a good day. I'm not trying to build a product, or my resume. I just work on whatever feels interesting.

There's an article that changed my perspective on programming [0]. It argues that an app can be something you make for the delight of a select few, like a home-cooked meal. I've made many home-cooked apps since then: achievements for my personal website [1], a timeline for my personal life [2], and lots of small improvements to other private projects.

I guess the lesson here is that programming is a great hobby, but programming for money can be a soul-crushing compromise. I think you'd hate any other hobby if you turned it into a full time job.

---

Every programmer occasionally, when nobody’s home, turns off the lights, pours a glass of scotch, puts on some light German electronica, and opens up a file on their computer. It’s a different file for every programmer. Sometimes they wrote it, sometimes they found it and knew they had to save it. They read over the lines, and weep at their beauty, then the tears turn bitter as they remember the rest of the files and the inevitable collapse of all that is good and true in the world.

This file is Good Code. It has sensible and consistent names for functions and variables. It’s concise. It doesn’t do anything obviously stupid. It has never had to live in the wild, or answer to a sales team. It does exactly one, mundane, specific thing, and it does it well. It was written by a single person, and never touched by another. It reads like poetry written by someone over thirty.

Every programmer starts out writing some perfect little snowflake like this. Then they’re told on Friday they need to have six hundred snowflakes written by Tuesday [3]

[0] https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/

[1] https://nicolasbouliane.com/achievements

[2] https://github.com/nicbou/backups

[3] https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

Re: Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?

#139

Post by nullsense »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #104

I'm kind of in the same boat. I've got plenty of project ideas, but when I start thinking about working on one of them I invariably get to the "What's the point?" stage. Now, normally I'd say we need to push through this. But I think instead we need to give ourselves some space given the current circumstances: We're in the middle of a global pandemic and in the US we're in the middle of some political and epistemolog…

>I find myself reading a lot of history and philosophy now trying to figure out how we got here

I recommend Why Nations Fail if you haven't read it and that's your goal.

Re: Ask HN: Losing all interest in programming, what now?

#140

Post by valenterry »

rrradical wrote: post #37

A lot of these answers are about finding things other than programming, and I think that's great. But as some additional perspective- I believe I was in a similar position to you, and what saved my career was functional programming. Basically I had grown really tired of solving every problem in the same way (create a new class, getters, setters... the same ol' object oriented stuff). And so I dove into Haskell which…

Was similar for me. The drawback is, once you get back your passion by finally understanding why many things have been so pointless without functional programming, your job options are now severely limited.
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