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Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding

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Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding

#51

Post by jamal-kumar »

zikero wrote: post #34
kardianos wrote: post #15

> 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…

No viable alternative to JS/TS for web (client side) unfortunately.

I mean, making a career pivot away from front end is technically an alternative

Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding

#53

Post by marcus_holmes »

anthropodie wrote: post #16
kardianos wrote: post #15

> 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 stay away from all the JS dependency bullshit as much as possible.

I use vanilla JS & CSS wherever possible, usually in a Go template.

If I have to create a SPA then I use Vue - I've found it's the least complex of the front-end frameworks. I build it using ESBuild from the flat JS files downloaded from the Vue site and stay as far from yarn/npm as possible.

I'm trying to work out how to compile Go to WASM and manipulate the DOM easily from there, but so far it's more complex than just writing JS.

Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding

#54

Post by gaoshan »

I'm an older developer and I do feel much of the pain of what you are talking about, especially with regard to frameworks/libs getting so abstracted as to be painful to learn and deal with effectively.

I realize that many of the practices of the past either won't scale or are not sufficiently secure but I sure do miss the days of, for one example, builds and deploys being simple things that anyone could reason about and accomplish in a matter of minutes (with maybe an easy to learn tool that helped automate even those simple things).

Now we have tools that require domain experts to configure and manage effectively, processes that are arcane and convoluted, services that are so flexible and abstract that you can't easily determine how to use them and their documentation has to be so specific that after a bit of time and evolution half of what you find online is wildly out of date, "Oh, yeah... don't follow those instructions you found on our site. Try this Github repo instead".

I miss just building cool things but I also feel so burnt out and worried about income that I have fallen into a rut myself.

Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding

#55

Post by taterbase »

What you're describing sound like the challenges that come from working at a big company. In my opinion you have a few options; each better suited towards different levels of burnout, which I believe you might be experiencing.

1. If you're severely burned out take some time off, as much as you can. A few weeks would be nice but a month or more would be even better. I've found that after spending the first few days (or even the first entire week) being a sloth on the couch I'll begin desiring to program again. Working on personal projects or just learning something new without worrying about work often helps me out of these valleys you're describing.

2. If you're moderately burnt out you may want to consider joining a smaller company or startup. The need for code is much greater and the agency you get at a smaller company is incredible. No need to ask for permission, they want you to code.

3. Finally if you're not quite burned out or if switching to a new company is not an option I'd honestly recommend reading some books like Peopleware, Mythical Man Month, Coders at Work and others. This will give you some respite as what you're experiencing is not uncommon. Learning how others have experienced what you're experiencing and how they push back or fight against cruft like this will embolden you to hopefully make change within and push back intelligently.

I hope you feel better and that the joy of coding comes back. And if it doesn't I hope you ultimately find happiness, wherever that may be.

Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding

#56

Post by cnity »

pigsty wrote: post #37
cnity wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 on game development. This is where I always find the most engaging and fun programming puzzles.

Yep. Key thing is to make small game projects that you aim to finish in well under a year. Once you embark on a big project and feature creep sets in, you’re back to avoiding programming.

Totally. I find that seeking a true MVP (like, really paring the idea down to truly minimal) is part of the fun. Making something really tiny that explores an idea is really inspiring and sets you up (mentally) for taking on something slightly larger next time.

Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding

#57

Post by ajmurmann »

pigsty wrote: post #37
cnity wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 on game development. This is where I always find the most engaging and fun programming puzzles.

Yep. Key thing is to make small game projects that you aim to finish in well under a year. Once you embark on a big project and feature creep sets in, you’re back to avoiding programming.

What libraries or engine do you recommend to build on for fun of programming?

Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding

#58

Post by digitalsushi »

The red tape is garroting us.

My wife's dev environment VMs are 'remediated' at 8pm regardless if she's using them or not - there is no override policy - and the company is singing the success story of saving 40 dollars in licensing.

At another corporation, it can take several weeks to learn how to fill out the IAM role and permission boundaries to allow a new app to run - and a governance board has to review it and allow it.

We have weaponized Agile and Scrum - loathsome coworkers will write stories to write stories. Upper management is pushing us to mark "out of office" one day a week, but to then work through it, due to superfluous meetings dragging the productivity down.

A 4000 dollar, maxed out macbook pro boots up directly into a load average of 20.00 and upwards, as antivirus software scrubs every interaction and files open and even at rest deep on the SSD disk. Teams videos run at 3 FPS and lag constantly, making one look like they dont understand the conversation.

All of this, to dabble in code, the thing we're passionate to do, to try and help these places exist.

I didn't fall out of love with coding. I love it deeply, but there's an abusive guardian at the front door with a shotgun, oblivious that I'm here to help

Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding

#59

Post by arka2147483647 »

Imagine you want to build a City

a. You come to a green empty field. Nothing is done, everything is possible.

b. You come to a town. A lot has been built, a lot of space used, but there are still many fields around the town to expand to, and build new things.

c. You come to a City. All the space is used. Everything you build must work with has already been built. Some things can be built, but only if it does not inconvenience what is already there.

Software as a whole is approaching/already in stage C. Sure you could make something that does not connect with anything that exists. But what use is that to anybody. People want to connect with the thing they already use.

This metaphor works with a lot of things. Operating Systems, the Cloud, even things like Game Libraries, ala Steam. To produce value, you need to work with what's already there.

Re: Ask HN: I’m falling out of love with coding

#60

Post by jefozabuss »

ajmurmann wrote: post #57
pigsty wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Key thing is to make small game projects that you aim to finish in well under a year. Once you embark on a big project and feature creep sets in, you’re back to avoiding programming.

What libraries or engine do you recommend to build on for fun of programming?

Unreal engine is pretty fun, I like the ease of adding models and physics by mouse without writing complex collision detection logics.
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