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Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

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Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#111

Post by gwenzek »

oreally wrote: post #70

Have you ever considered what's making you not enjoy programming anymore? Journalling your day-to-day might help. Here's one example that I found that really screws with people not enjoying programming. If you have a career, chances are you're going through rules/bullshit(ie. code standards, needlessly large codebases) made up by other programmers within your organization and that's making you not enjoy programming a…

> You could also try to contribute to people also trying to make programming less friction-ish.

I'd love to get into the Jai community but really don't know where to start, beyond watching the videos.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#112

Post by smt88 »

csallen wrote: post #100
tomg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone considering leaving the web development industry after 12 years: JavaScript is a never ending grind. Callbacks, then Bluebird, then Promises, then a sync await. a new testing framework every six months. a new web framework every couple of years. aimless, massive changes to the language (classes in a prototyped language? Why not). JavaScript then coffeescript then three versions of typescript. too many UI l…

A lot of this is a direct result of feeling that one always needs to be on the bleeding edge, which is both unnecessary and also a recipe for wasting time on fads. As an analogy, consider fiction. Imagine reading as many new novels as possible as they're released. Well, most of these novels will be completely irrelevant 5 years from now. The good ones stand the test of time. So you might as well only read novels that…

> A lot of this is a direct result of feeling that one always needs to be on the bleeding edge, which is both unnecessary and also a recipe for wasting time on fads.

It's also because the JS ecosystem is absolutely massive -- too massive. Instead of consolidating around a good package, people create a new one. You end up with a small number of contributors (often one) per library, and being on the bleeding edge is the only way to make sure your dependencies are maintained.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#113

Post by quickthrower2 »

onion2k wrote: post #90
quickthrower2 wrote: post #68

Simple programs! I find I get burned out by commercial code. So many hands have touched it, millions of lines, scant docs, hard to make sense of it, but ... deadlines, get this task done and that. Create a simple program outside of work and connect with the joy again! I am having fun writing a simple nodejs app which is using AWS service. Nothing groundbreaking but its fun to learn and tinker with. I have no expectat…

Create a simple program outside of work and connect with the joy again! I found the opposite was useful. My day job was writing quite trivial code (crud apps, forms, etc) so I started writing far more complex apps in my spare time. Things that were truly challenging. It turns out they're a lot of fun to build.

I can see that being true too. The parallel is your challenging code and my simple code have is that they are solo dev projects (presumably!) with little legacy, and you get to choose the direction you take them in.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#114

Post by vfinn »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #68

Simple programs! I find I get burned out by commercial code. So many hands have touched it, millions of lines, scant docs, hard to make sense of it, but ... deadlines, get this task done and that. Create a simple program outside of work and connect with the joy again! I am having fun writing a simple nodejs app which is using AWS service. Nothing groundbreaking but its fun to learn and tinker with. I have no expectat…

I'd say write manageable programs. The uglier the codebase gets, the more I hate coding it. If the codebase is well-thought and easily extendable, coding is mostly fun and you get pleasure out of beautiful execution.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#115

Post by davedx »

I did a brief stint as an architect and realised after about 3 months of doing that, that the things that had started to annoy or bore me about programming were all quite trivial things and I should just get over myself. Since then I've been programming again for about 2 years and quite enjoying myself.

So basically, take a break from programming and do something else for a bit, and don't sweat the little things that annoy you day-to-day -- try to appreciate instead all the creative freedom and chances you get to really test your intellect.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#116

Post by issa »

riantogo wrote: post #107

I'm in a bit of a reverse situation. I left programming some 12 yrs and want to get back into it. But I find it so hard with all the commandline installs, config files etc. The barrier to just getting to "hello world" seems so high now. Pasting my recent ask HN here in case I have better luck: What is the easiest way to launch a simple PHP website these days? -A simple CRUD web app -No new sytax to learn (just good o…

I can't think of anything that doesn't have a steep learning curve, aside from just not using any frameworks and writing PHP code. If you're building something solo and it's not too complicated, that's a decent option if you don't want to spend time learning things that won't get you to hello world. But, depending on what you're doing, something like WordPress might do what you want out of the box.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#117

Post by TheAsprngHacker »

m_j_g wrote: post #99

Agda and dependent types, after 15 years in software development I discovered it two years ago, and it is bringing me joy every day since :)

Do you have any project ideas for Agda? I used it to formalize the simply typed lambda calculus; what else should I do? After all, I can't really do "traditional" programming projects in Agda as its ecosystem is more geared towards proving. Are there any interesting projects with proofs as a focus?

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#118

Post by simongray »

reinkaos wrote: post #52
beders wrote: post #18

I had the same issue. Then I went back to the roots: Lisp And learned Clojure. You will feel like you know nothing. You will feel handicapped. You will be confused. Then, one day, you will understand what simplicity means and how Clojure's design embraces that more than in any other language I know. By then you will have embraced the flying-by-your-pants-exploratory style of programming at the REPL. And don't want to…

How do you reconcile this with your day job? Or did you go on to work with Clojure full-time?

I'm not the one you asked, but personally after I learned Clojure I completely joined the Rich Hickey cult and only sought out Clojure/ClojureScript jobs or jobs where I could decide what language to use myself. I'm now on my third one. It obviously limits your pool of available jobs significantly, but I try to keep up with which companies and organisations are using Clojure in my city and so far it hasn't been an issue at all.

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#119

Post by willvarfar »

If you enjoy solving problems, and enjoy zoning out in dream worlds thinking about abstract problems, then I warmly recommend http://azspcs.com/

If you enjoy making pretty things to show others, then I warmly recommend http://ldjam.com/ - the next game-making contest is this weekend! Join in!

The joy is from taking part. Don't discount yourselves and think you can't enter because you are a beginner. Take part! :D

Re: Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

#120

Post by tonyedgecombe »

csallen wrote: post #100
tomg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone considering leaving the web development industry after 12 years: JavaScript is a never ending grind. Callbacks, then Bluebird, then Promises, then a sync await. a new testing framework every six months. a new web framework every couple of years. aimless, massive changes to the language (classes in a prototyped language? Why not). JavaScript then coffeescript then three versions of typescript. too many UI l…

A lot of this is a direct result of feeling that one always needs to be on the bleeding edge, which is both unnecessary and also a recipe for wasting time on fads. As an analogy, consider fiction. Imagine reading as many new novels as possible as they're released. Well, most of these novels will be completely irrelevant 5 years from now. The good ones stand the test of time. So you might as well only read novels that…

That feeling of not having mastery of your tools is part of the problem.
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