Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

Feynman described his run-in with burnout, you may find his experience interesting. I quoted a piece below, but the book is more persuasive with more intricacies of his situation.

Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. [...] So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I’ll never accomplish anything, I’ve got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I’m going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.

[0] Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character.

I'm in a similar position - to the extent of largely giving up work.

I may differ in that I'm not really determined to rediscover programming. I have many interests, don't need or want much cash and am quite happy to cobble together income from other sources. But I am curious to probe the extent and permanence of the loss. Learning something new is my approach - Clojure, for the combination of lispy paradigm challenge with practicality (it suits a couple of projects I have in mind). So far I'm enjoying it more than I expected. It's refreshing.

I don't know what the results will be in my case. But learning/discovery is so close to the heart of what attracted many of us to programming, I suggest reconnecting with it as one approach.

I've been learning it for a couple of weeks. It is humbling as an experienced dev to find something quite straightforward (parens-whining aside, Clojure is a small & simple language), yet not have a clue how to approach problem-solving with it.

20 years is a long time in anything. My first piece of advice is that nobody here knows who you are, nobody here knew you as a teenager, and nobody is going to understand what "love programming" and "don't enjoy it" actually means for you. The point is: anybody who claims that they got de-burned-out with this one trick isn't necessarily dishonest or naive, and if something in the comments here resonates, then by all means try it out. But they might be offering a good prescription for the wrong diagnosis.

This may sound dismissive or condescending and I promise it isn't my intent: have you considered speaking with an actual therapist? As a society we tend to think of therapists as something you do when you're mentally ill, but you don't just go to the dentist when you suspect you have a cavity: mental hygiene is important, and humans are universally bad at self-diagnosis, either physiological or otherwise.

In my current job I write Python, which I really don't like very much and I get burned out on Python-specific things. But I know my feelings of burnout are due to things that would be true regardless of the technical environment - and that an overall job with Python is far preferable to my previously miserable job with F#. And there's a lot of non-job stuff going on - such as the historic pandemic, and domestic stresses from being cooped up at home.

So speaking with a therapist about what's actually eating you might be quite worthwhile. If it is just burnout with programming, there really are specialists out there who might give well-informed, non-anecdotal advice. If it's something else, then having a professional suss it out means you can make better decisions about major aspects of your life. Plus, therapy is something that's easy to do over videochat. I am not recommending therapy, but I do think you should consider it.

My theory I'm testing out right now is that if you end up doing other things that are valuable for a programmer to do, that isn't directly pr ogramming, you can still get paid and also foster other interests while your enjoyment of programming might recharge.

I mentor people, I architect and manage projects. I lean on communication skills and relationships so that the answer is easy and simple rather than complicated. I do code sometimes, but not the super heavy lifting. It may not work out great in the long term and I might have to take a break, or it might turn out that what I'm doing isn't as valuable somehow, but its working alright thus far.