Every day. I’m a bit jealous of all my friends with professions that don’t require any of their free time. They can have all kinds of hobbies and spend their free time doing whatever they want.
Seriously, change company.
Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?
191–200 of 570 posts
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?
#192I think about law school or an MBA at least once a week. The opportunity cost is extremely high though. It's pretty hard leaving six figures of income in a low cost of living (and the grass is always greener I'm sure).
Did the MBA thing, didn't manage to land an MBA job so I'm back in tech, six figures poorer. It's not a slam dunk by any means, and yes the opportunity cost stings as much as the sticker price.
Which MBA program did you do?
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?
#193It's interesting how many of you guys have other interests, but stick to programming since it solves a paycheck problem.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?
#194I'd like to drive a train. Train Simulator will have to do for now.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?
#195I left programming for dancing.
I'd been working at the same job for about ten years, and I started to work on a different group that made the same product with a never technology. I hated that, I found it hard to work in that and I wasn't that productive. Also I had some burnout, some depression, and not much to look forward to...
Except for dancing. I had begun some years prior and I became somewhat good, and I even began to teach.
Then an offer came, resign from the job for money was offered to all, I accepted.
For about two years I just gave classes and worked as staff. Unfortunately the money was not enough.
Then I started helping on the dance school's webpage. The money wasn't enough yet.
So I got a programming job and resigned from most of my job in the dance school. I just teach one hour a week.
I really lost my dream job because of money and not being good enough earn enough to life with that.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?
#196I love programming. Even if I still had to use Perl I still wouldn't give it up. Admittedly that's because I like Perl, but I also freely admit I'm more productive with full-stack JavaScript. That said, I wouldn't mind writing about programming, but I can't afford to stop my day job. I'd love to write an ebook on JavaScript, a spiritual successor to Marijn Haverbeke's Eloquent JavaScript but using ES6/ES7. Maybe also…
> That said, I wouldn't mind writing about programming, but I can't afford to stop my day job.
What's stopping you getting started in your spare time? Even an hour a day in the evenings will add up.
You have a lot of good ideas, but they aren't going to write themselves! :-)
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?
#197I currently work in a good environment where I'm appreciated and paid well. Not many people in the world can say that, so I have a lot to be thankful for. Programming has done good by me. But I don't love it. Alan Kay is right, it's like building "an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves". There's no eleg…
> smart but artless This is why it's so important for me to work on something people use . At a previous job I'd sometimes hit a wall. I would log into one of the production API hosts and tail -f the access logs, where I'd see many different people and applications using a piece of software that I'd help write. I'd grab an IP address and geolocate it and see where the person was from. The humanization of work can be…
Though I know that your intentions were harmless, I'd like to add that it's not a good idea to do such a lookup without a sound reason. At some places where I worked, I could have been fired for doing that unless I was looking to fix a bug and this particular bit of data was essential.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?
#198For 10 years programming has been my thing, but for a while now I have been getting the feeling that programming won't be big in 30 years. If all my eggs are in the programming basket and I can't keep a programming job in the future, I would be out of luck. (presumably because it's a blue collar profession by that point). With that fear in mind, becoming a M.D. actually seems like it would be a good decision. Even th…
I am curious as to why you don't think programming will be big in 30 years? One of my partners (we studied Biomedical Engineering together in undergrad) completed medical school, and then he decided it wasn't for him, and that he wanted to go back to technical work and in particular programming. A big part of his reasoning behind the transition was that he felt a large fraction of what doctors do is very repetitive a…
If kids of age 8-9 get to learn Python and write simple programs, by the age 20 they'll be building real products that will cover 10--20yo category, and the hard stuff will be like ... really hard. Research hard.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?
#199It's interesting how many of you guys have other interests, but stick to programming since it solves a paycheck problem.
On the whole, I think a lot of us really do enjoy coding and it's hard to overestimate how freeing financial security is. It's that security that enables other hobbies, too.
I personally enjoy having at least some interests (mainly coffee and photography) that I can pursue without having to worry about costs. If I ever leave programming, I'd probably take one of those up, but I'm afraid the financial support requirements would diminish my enjoyment some. (Sometimes, I want to work on side projects but after programming for 40 hours a week, enough is enough...)
I am though considering opening a coffee cart -- but not to make money. Opening a coffee cart sounds fun precisely because I wouldn't need to worry about profitability and I could just focus on providing something tasty and meeting people.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever thought of leaving programming for something else?
#200I'm an electrical engineer via a nontraditional path. Like software dev, it still involves large swaths of time spent staring at screens while inside a box. I've been mulling over the possibility of some kind of work that would be more conducive to my long term sanity. My imagination has me developing and deploying instrumentation for environmental science. 1/3rd screen time 1/3rd workshop, 1/3rd fielding instruments…
That sounds like a smart plan your imagination has. In the coming global climate catastrophe there will be a whole lot of instrumenation needed, and I bet you could build an awesome lifestyle/niche business on it.