I'm currently fighting with poor README instructions on how to get a project up and running locally. It's been a couple of hours already and I just want to code, not fight with these tools.
Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding
21–30 of 301 posts
Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding
#22That doesn’t sound like you’re falling out of love with programming. It sounds like you’re frustrated with the red tape at work. Try working on something fun on the side. Make a game, or a mobile app, or something you’ve always been curious about that doesn’t have anything to do with your job. You might be amazed by how productive you feel when you work on something ambitious that doesn’t involve all of the corporate…
+1 on game development. This is where I always find the most engaging and fun programming puzzles.
Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding
#23> Any project I work on is connected to a million different tools, workflows and services, I was just skimming and read that, and I thought "he is working in Javascript" and yep, later on that's it. I stay away from the Javascript/TS ecosystem (npm et al). I program mostly in Go, but also quite a bit in Typescript. I would learn/use (even if for personal projects) more boring tech stacks, like Java/C#/Go/PL-SQL/T-SQL…
I do the same but Go can't help me with frontend, right? What do you do?
It's worth stating: you can write frontends without buying into the ecosystem at large. I've been working on a multiplayer video game using Go + websockets in the backend, and a JS frontend with zero dependencies.
IMO JS is really fun to program this way. You program straight to the capabilities of the browser. All of the problems people promised I'd face by avoiding their framework of choice didn't show up after all.
Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding
#24> Any project I work on is connected to a million different tools, workflows and services, I was just skimming and read that, and I thought "he is working in Javascript" and yep, later on that's it. I stay away from the Javascript/TS ecosystem (npm et al). I program mostly in Go, but also quite a bit in Typescript. I would learn/use (even if for personal projects) more boring tech stacks, like Java/C#/Go/PL-SQL/T-SQL…
I do the same but Go can't help me with frontend, right? What do you do?
I once suffered from Javascript fatigue, had to work with frontend anyways, and had the privilege of picking my own tools.
That's when I started experimenting with Elm, Bucklescript (now ReScript) and Clojurescript. It was a very insightful journey that made me enjoy frontend development again.
Today, Clojurescript is my favorite method of working with frontend code and, as long as I can pick my own tools, that's the one I'm sticking with.
For those suffering of Javascript fatigue, I highly recommend playing around with these alternatives. Try doing a simple, small side project in them. It may reignite your joy for programing and who knows, maybe you can find a job to work full-time with these tools.
Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding
#25>I now understand why there’s a trend of developers who want to go live in a farm or take up woodworking I own a farm and a carpentry business, both since the start of covid. And I do freelance development. I have no plans to return to corporate coding. Life is great, never been happier or more fulfilled. But that is just me, your mileage may vary. Also it is a lot of hard physical work, at least during building and…
you're like a bingo card rolled up into a single person. I recently used my circular saw, multi tool, and drill for my first real project(mounting a hangboard on my ceiling joists) and it was immensely satisfying... I see the allure but I'm definitely wearing gloves next time. my hands are all cut up from driving the screws
Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding
#26tl;dr you probably just work on projects you don't like, not that you don't like coding. Been there, done that. Nothing new under the sun. Those people who say that you will never work a day in your life if you do what you love are foll of crap because having an option to do something and having to do something are two very different things. And having to do something you like doing is the fastest way to hate it. My advice is switch company and look for work that interests you nowadays. Like instead of working for a company doing e-commerce, go work for a company doing IoT, banking, healthcare or anything like that. Just change the type of work you do.
Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding
#27DevOps does this with me. Code = happy. DevOps = disgust.
Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding
#28You can write in JavaScript without any frameworks and libs. The language itself is pretty self-sufficient.
5 years ago I started https://github.com/akalenuk/wordsandbuttons to focus on interactive writing. Just text and JavaScript to make interactive illustrations. There are no dependencies in principle. Nor external, neither external. Only text and code. Tons of fun, no red tape.
You might think that this works for small projects only. Well, there are more than 50 interactive pages now (would have been more, but I spent 1.5 years writing a book), and things haven't started to fall apart yet.
I strongly advice vanilla programming for hobby. JavaScript or not.
Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding
#29It happens in ALL industries and fields, from art (music, design, painting) to software development.
Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding
#30> Should I just switch careers?
You certainly seem to be in a rut, but before you take up woodworking or glassblowing try branching out and do some programming in a totally different area. This could lead to a change of career focus but you would have to start in a part-time/hobby way. I can't make any concrete suggestions since I don't know you or your circumstances, but make radical changes. Choose a new language, get into a totally different programming area, think of your own projects where you have total control.
Personally, I work in the scientific area doing a lot of varied work including visualization. I have an embedded programming hobby in the Arduino world using C/C++. I have been making measuring instruments for ham radio but currently I'm in the middle of three clock projects. All of them are designed to JUST WORK™. They guess the current timezone, take time from the internet and try to handle daylight savings changes automatically. Configuration, to set access point and password, is done through a web server that runs on the clock acting as an access point. I cut acrylic cases for them and they are good enough to make nice gifts. It's very satisfying to take a project from the back of the envelope through to completion, and it appears that is something you are missing.