Coding, by itself is not the fun part.
What you are coding should ideally be fun to you.
In my opinion this is a sign that you need to find what you like to make.
For me it is compilers, for some others it is games, etc.
Ask HN: Is it normal to fall out of love with coding?
61–70 of 124 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is it normal to fall out of love with coding?
#62I enjoy coding just as much as I did when I started doing it over 30 years ago. I'm a lot less enthusiastic about the things I and my colleagues are asked to build though. All the scandals and exploitative uses of technology that have come to light in the past few years make the field feel much less fun and innocent.
Re: Ask HN: Is it normal to fall out of love with coding?
#63I felt the same way after CS, and then working a year as software engineer. And I think it's because of two reasons:
1) I never loved coding (even though I thought so). I loved the process of finding solutions for problems, and solve them. But coding was not the deciding factor in this. The research, investigate what should be done, speaking with customers etc. _This_ I loved. But I did not love coding. All those problems, debugging of code that does not work etc. I'll compare it to an architect drawing the buildings, making sure that they live up to the requirements ("solutioning"). But the architect is not building the building (coding).
2) What I loved about coding in those 10-15 years I was a hobby-programmer before CS, I was working on small, fun projects. They were quick to get working, and then I was quickly moving to the next thing. And I think that is a problem when working as a professional. You get sucked into large projects that (seemingly) never ends. And that's not the spirit you had in the beginning.
Have you tried going to hackathons? I can really recommend it! Having a weekend where you hack with other hackers and do some coding is a really nice way of working, and can get you the spirit back!
Re: Ask HN: Is it normal to fall out of love with coding?
#64Sometimes what you need is change. I am sixty-five years old. I was a programmer for fifteen years, started a consulting company, then a software business. Was acqui-hired. Became VP Product Dev over 27 locations, 1200 developers, hundreds of products, then semi-retired for four years and worked on digital audio production. Got bored, did another startup, wrote code. Sold it and became CTO of a product division. Later worked for an investment group, became CTO for one of their acquisitions for almost ten years. Six years ago went back to technical work on my "reverse career plan" (junior programmer by the time I'm 75 ;-) ). Wrote js/react analytic front-end apps, Python back-end analytics, got into machine learning, co-authored a book about it, got some big data consulting gigs, learned Hadoop/Spark. Currently hands-on dev for Spark and ML apps.
For me, changes were the key. Burnout melts away. But you can burn out in any role. If you have the skills to do tech work, try to keep them alive. Coming back to hands on tech work is incredibly refreshing. So is leaving it behind for awhile when you've reached the burn-out point.
Re: Ask HN: Is it normal to fall out of love with coding?
#65I've been programming for 20 years, professionally for ~11. I was bored out of my mind 3 years ago until I found a job at GitLab. Turns out the right people can make you love your job. The wrong ones will make you lose your mind.
But this can happen with anything. I've been playing piano for 27 years, went to college to become a concert pianist. I was quite good. Had a bad professor, realized how very far I was from my dream. How far everyone was. I loved the crap out of piano. And I graduated with my degree. But I don't have that nagging desire to be a concert pianist. I think piano is great. Discovered being successful at coding was 100x easier than being successful at piano. And a much more promising future. And I am really good at it. And you don't have to spend hours alone by yourself. You get to talk to and help other people. And your building things that directly help others.
Re: Ask HN: Is it normal to fall out of love with coding?
#66University had killed all passion for conding\software development in me for a few years. I worked in QA for some time, Oracle products consulting\integration and only switched back to development 2-3 years later.
Re: Ask HN: Is it normal to fall out of love with coding?
#67>> But of recently it has started to feel more monotonous and boring.
You mean work has started to feel like.... work?
Any time you make your hobby into a job, it goes from being play to being work and will lose a certain aspect of fun.
Re: Ask HN: Is it normal to fall out of love with coding?
#68It's normal to fall out of love with anything.
That said, sounds like you've simply grown. The actual act of writing the code is boring. That's not where the fun ever was. Typing on a keyboard? Yeah, thrill city.
The fun was in thinking and the problem solving; if you no longer get that fun at the point of typing, then of course the typing doesn't seem fun anymore. If the kind of problem you like to solve is now at a broader level, embrace it.
Re: Ask HN: Is it normal to fall out of love with coding?
#69tell me more about your company, I'm interested to know what it was about.
Re: Ask HN: Is it normal to fall out of love with coding?
#70First of all, I would say it is absolutely normal to fall out of love with coding, and I wouldn't worry about it! If you're enjoying what you are doing, that's a good thing. Unlike the top comment, I don't think this has to be a sign of burning out (although it can be) - humans are complex beings. The world changes, and we change as well. What was enjoyable to you 15 years ago may not be as enjoyable now, and what yo…
How easy would you say it is to move back into a developer role if I say switch into product management role? I am scared I will be asked a lot about why I am switching back into coding and why I left it in the first place? I am scared of coming across as indecisive
I've been on both sides, and I interview a lot of engineers now as a product person. If I heard this from an interviewee, especially given your context in this thread, I would not view it as indecisive. To the contrary, I would credit the interviewee as ambitious and a lifelong learner.