I don't and I'm bored AF!
This is unhealthy, try to find what you enjoy! At least a little bit. If you haven't noticed it yet this will start wearing you down.
Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?
11–20 of 135 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?
#12- I read about cool things people do (you're already on the right path if you're on this site). Learning about the cool things often motivates me to "Hey I'll make one too".
- Customize your work environment. This is rarely mentioned, but it's a very effective way to keep you interested in programming. All the best SWEs I know customized their work environment heavily. I've basically never lost interest on programming, even on the most boring projects I've worked on, mainly because just "typing" on my vim/terminal is so fun!
- Learn other engineering branches. When I don't feel like coding, I design and print a lot of 3D printer stuffs. I build/program RC cars/quadcopters. Then somewhere in the process, I'll be like "hey I can program it to do this!" And I'm back to having fun with my computer.
- Don't burnout. I have the feeling you may have some early symptoms of burning out. Go play games and hangout with loved ones.
- Know what _really_ makes you unhappy. Is that the work truly soul crushing? Are you trying to get promoted, but felt like you can't even though you are trying hard? Work environment? Lack of sleep? You usually can't debug a problem without knowing what causes it. So take some time and reflect about it.
Hope things get better for you :). And keep it up!
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?
#13I don't. Turning my hobby into my career killed my hobby and, really, that's fine. It affords me a good life and the ability to discover and enjoy new hobbies. If you're worried about "keeping up," then I would suggest you 1) ignore the rat-race that is framework-of-the-day and 2) focus on learning fundamentals of your domain. Sure, you'll miss out on some hip startup jobs but typical employers don't care about your…
Ignoring the framework of the day and “learning the fundamentals” won’t get you past the either HR filters or make you competitive with developers who are constantly doing Resume Driven Development and have a resume that is buzzword compliant. Especially if you are an older developer (I’m 45) and you will just be seen as just another old out of touch developer. That being said, the further down the stack you go, the…
Perhaps I should clarify in that I don't worry about what's cool right now, but do in continuing education in what's new-ish and a solid solution. Having fundamental understandings of your domain is very helpful in spotting what's good and what's marketing flash-in-the-pan.
> That being said, the further down the stack you go, the more stability there is in technology.
IME, it's about where you go and not what level of the stack.
Some places are just fine with a basic form-based website with a little JS for convenience that ultimately just talks to an IBM mainframe. Others want full-blown SPA in the latest, greatest Hipster language deployed across a dozen datacenters with Kubernetes and whatever other trimmings.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?
#14What killed your motivation to be exact? Most programmers don’t find their work boring... you must’ve hit a really dead end company to feel that way.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?
#15I don't. Turning my hobby into my career killed my hobby and, really, that's fine. It affords me a good life and the ability to discover and enjoy new hobbies. If you're worried about "keeping up," then I would suggest you 1) ignore the rat-race that is framework-of-the-day and 2) focus on learning fundamentals of your domain. Sure, you'll miss out on some hip startup jobs but typical employers don't care about your…
Yep. Just view the reduction in side projects as normal. No matter how much you love art, if you paint at work for eight hours, you're going to be far less likely to want to paint at home. Monotony is defined by lack of variety and repetition.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?
#16If your job is very 'real world engineering'y, work on projects that tickle theoretical itch. Try to implement a y combinator in a language you like without looking it up. Or learn physics and do simulations to help you.
The real question is why should you keep your programming motivation up if its not something you're enjoying? Find something you enjoy and do that! Programming is a means to an end. If you want to enjoy the means more, find a more inspiring end!
It's a bull market right now, you can try working in a very different kind of programming.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?
#17Part of it might be to find work where the grunt work is more closely related to business goals. Seeing its purpose (and assuming you care about the business goals) might provide the drive needed to do the work.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?
#18I don't. Turning my hobby into my career killed my hobby and, really, that's fine. It affords me a good life and the ability to discover and enjoy new hobbies. If you're worried about "keeping up," then I would suggest you 1) ignore the rat-race that is framework-of-the-day and 2) focus on learning fundamentals of your domain. Sure, you'll miss out on some hip startup jobs but typical employers don't care about your…
I also second the other, "I don't.", responses below. At some point along the way I started really thinking about what I was doing. I also realized that the "rat race" in software engineering is the constant need to "keep up" with the latest technical trends.
At that point I had to start looking elsewhere for a sense of engagement. I ended up finding fulfillment in discovering where I could provide the most value to a company and then focusing on that. 9 times out of 10 it had nothing to do with technology.
These days, if I want to enjoy learning about technology I sit down and read some of Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming".
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?
#19Motivation is usually a product of mental health. Mental health is a product of a variety of things like work-life-balance, good sleep, healthy diet, physical exercise, and measured progression towards realistic goals. Optimize and improve on those, and you'll have more motivation and mental energy overall.
Since full time work rarely makes good use of focused mental resources, you might be lucky if you have a couple hours in the evening to work on personal projects. For weekends my experience was I needed Saturday to recover - it's hard to focus on a screen and sit in a chair. But by Sunday I can devote focus into personal projects. Still not very many hours to use. It helps to have no social life and family responsibilities, but I'd rather have those than more programming time.
Overall it's hard to have enough motivation and mental energy while working 8 hours a day, but you can optimize for health and get some more utility out of your free time.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up?
#20> Working on boring, crappy projects for a living is just killing me You couldn't live in a better time for being able to pick your work as a Software Engineer. Even location is irrelevant more and more with remote work. If you want to work on something that excites you, find that and do it! Outside of that, build things that you want to exist using interesting technologies or even just a refined, latest and greatest…
> If you want to work on something that excites you, find that and do it!
I think that's a bit oversimplified, a lot of really cool projects are simply inaccessible for one reason or another. While there's cool stuff out there, the vast majority available to your average person seems to be the boring stuff