Ask HN: Lost my appetite for software development, any recommendations?

Talk to your manager and see how they think you are doing. You might be too hard on yourself and/or in awe of co-workers.

It sounds like you are in a good spot to soak up knowledge from people that are highly respected in their fields. Try to understand what these improvements and new solutions offer to the product. It is possible that the eager devs are just spinning their wheels and/or reinventing wheels because of new shiny libraries. If they truly are very advanced in their fields, I can't imagine your manager has the same expectations of you and them. Maybe your role is to bang out awesome work that helps them keep their brains engaged in the very advanced work they do (you didn't describe what it was but it sounds more than CRUD apps).

Another approach is to recognize you are a professional and that there are times where you simply aren't motivated. I'm sure this happens in other professions. There are days/weeks I just am bored doing what we do. Software development of business applications just isn't terribly exciting. Figuring out problems and creating things in code is fun though. Think about what brought you into software development, maybe there is an ember still there you can slowly get burning again.

Thanks for sharing, and it's quite refreshing to hear your situation because.. you are not alone. I often feel that way.. dead end jobs, useless projects, lost of energy, lost of ambitions, I can go on all day. My remedy to this is just to realize that this is a wave, a phase in which you're at the bottom of that wave, a sort of "life recession" where you get forced to question a few things. Ten years ago, I was so fed up of foking programming that I never thought I'd get the buzz back. Today, I'm still buried in projects, but my outlook changed somehow, I find this interesting again. It's funny, because it kind of coincided with my kids outgrowing the diaper years :)

> "I hate to say this, because being ambitious has always been a part of my identity, but having kids may make one less ambitious. It hurts to see that sentence written down. I squirm to avoid it. But if there weren't something real there, why would I squirm? The fact is, once you have kids, you're probably going to care more about them than you do about yourself. And attention is a zero-sum game. Only one idea at a time can be the top idea in your mind. Once you have kids, it will often be your kids, and that means it will less often be some project you're working on."

To some extend cutting back on work to spend more time with kids is result of stable and wealthy society. Growing up back home, I had heard so many people worked harder and longer hours after their first child was born. Many people even left their families to work overseas so that they can create better future for their kids.

So depending where you are from or on your current circumstances, kids may make you less ambitious or more.

EDIT: to OP, as father in late 30s, I also question if I want to do programming long-term or something else. I used to think how I want to be remembered, but now I ask myself how I want my son to remember me. I don't know the answer yet, but this question help me refocus when I feel lost.

Family and maturity change your perspective. While younger developers are chasing the next "shiny new thing", you just want to put your time in and go home. That's nothing to be ashamed of. To satisfy "getting home faster", I suggest you concentrate your effort and attention on improving the development process. What rote work or common functionality can you make easier to build/deploy? Ask yourself what the last coding project that you were enthusiastic about was and try to work on something similar. Or, pick something completely different so that the process of learning reminds of why you used to think coding was worthwhile.

Yes, it depends on the circumstances, of course. But I've seen myself make different (maybe perhaps smarter?) choices as well and so to have both a successful career and be with my family.

Yes, I could've taken a contract in a different city and earn a bit more. I used to take longer periods of time off to work on my own personal projects.

But nowadays, instead of working many late nights for 8 months, so I can take 4 months off to work on my personal projects, I usually work 10-11 months, but less hours per week. So I'm home earlier every day and I'm not exhausted every night.

I ask recruiters and colleagues 1-2 months before the end of the project (sometimes I take a few weeks off between projects) and plan for the next project early - so I have more choices and am less under pressure. And in the past years I've been able to work only in local projects that don't require travel outside my city.

Instead of learning niche-y tech because it looks cool on my resume (e.g. Svelte, Elixir / Phoenix or Clojure) I use my time to learn Python or React instead. Why? Because it increases my general market value as a freelancer better. My employed colleagues with no spouse and kids will use their free evenings to program in Golang to create a game that has not launched after a year. They're doing it just for fun. Me? Should I have a some spare time for side projects, I will try to learn something like Python with Flask or Django to create a side-project that will hopefully launch within a few weeks and perhaps I can even make some money off of it a few months down the road. "Worst case" I learnt Python and have a portfolio project to show off.