Ask HN: anyone ever drop everything and leave software dev behind?

I understand how you feel - I'm going through this right now in fact.

Firstly, I agree with edw519 - Don't think you're bad at what you do because someone may know more, or you just feel that you don't know enough. You can always learn more, but (as is my problem) motivating yourself to learn programming if you don't like programming at the moment is an exercise in futility, and could cause burn-out.

My advice would be to look into industries that sound interesting. Chances are you know a little (or a lot) about quite a few different things / technologies, and that can actually get you quite far in an interview process, especially if you are passionate about it and are willing to learn whatever it takes to be good at it. It's surprising how few people actually "care" in an interview, and from both conducting interviews and being the one interviewed, I've seen a LOT of lackluster applicants. But the passionate ones definitely stand out. And if that is already a topic that you are fascinated by, it becomes very obvious.

Look around, be patient, and try learning about anything and everything that may be interesting on the side.

I absolutely agree. I was destroying myself over not meeting my own expectations as a developer. I've always had other interests but refused them. My thinking was that my discipline would pay off as I became a better programmer and applied more time to practicing.

Then, along came a great deal on a decent boat. $250 for motor, hull, interior, outdrive, and trailer. While it did have all of the components, it did require quite a bit of work. I also didn't know a thing about boats when I purchased it.

It's been 4 months that I've been working on it. I haven't kicked myself in the ass once for giving up the programming time I would had been able to apply to my skills otherwise. And I'm much more comfortable working in such a frustrating environment now that I don't rely so heavily on satisfaction from programming.

Two bonuses that also came from my purchase: - I know a bunch about boats - I'll be able to truly appreciate the free time that my job affords me when I launch for the first time tomorrow (assuming all of the kinks are worked out).

I can answer that last question... there were not many girls in engineering. There were a few (and they were cute and I worked with some getting their Masters) but the Arts and soft sciences were loaded with girls. That's why I got a BA rather than a BS. I still learned how to code, sat on engineering committees, participated in defenses, did Military funded research on embedded devices, etc., but I had fun with the opposite sex too. You need some balance in life.

I had approximately no knowledge of embedded systems beforehand. I did well in math in high school and I played around with an Apple II and BASIC as a kid. (Initially, I was just aiming at "engineering" as a broad field; it wasn't until I got further into it that I focused on embedded stuff. My degree was in mechanical engineering, but I took mostly EE classes.)

I switched because I discovered that I love designing and building things. I still love teaching, and I wouldn't be surprised if I did it again.

Why didn't I study engineering the first time? That's a damn good question. The English degree did give me the ability to write reasonably well, but other than that, it was crap.

Mostly, it was just bad luck that I didn't end up in a technical field initially. I went to a liberal arts college and took soul-crushing, thinking-free chemistry and biology classes as a freshman-- that pretty much killed science for me. It should have been obvious, but even as late as my junior year in college, I didn't know that the field of electrical engineering existed. It's kind of a sad story, looking back on it, but at least it ended well.

“Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.”" -George Carlin