Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

The hardest hurdle initially is to set up a “virtual environment” which means you have a project by project collection of all the packages you need instead of installing everything globally.

Setting up virtual environments used to be a pain. Today it’s so easy:

1. Make sure you have Python 3.8 installed. There’s installers for Mac and Win. 2. Create a folder for your new project. 2. Inside that folder, use your console or terminal to write: python3 -m venv p_env 3. You now have a virtual env, all your stuff will be stored in that p_env folder. 4. Activate it with another command: source p_env/bin/activate 5. It’s now activated and you can use “pip” to install packages like Django a great web framework.

By the way go check out Django and go through the tutorial. It’s very fun and will get you going with a CRUD in no time.

Let's be honest: you don't have any experience with php or mysql anymore. 12 years ago was the era of php 5 with some remnants of 4. Php 7 and the ecosystem are a lot better nowadays (composer, Symfony etc.). For database people tend to use Postgres when they can but even MySQL added lot of good things with JSON, CTE, window functions.

You may want to start learning from scratch.

"Hello world" is still those letters in a .php file uploaded to a host tho.

I don't think more programming is a solution to being burnt out on programming.

I.e. stop programming for the sake of programming. A new paradigm, language or methodology to be more efficient.

Instead solve problems, and use the tools at hand, my excitement from programming originally was the idea that I could build anything.

Personally, when it comes to putting code on the screen I am motivated mostly by two things:

1. I am excited to put a puzzle together. The same thing that makes me interested in finishing a basic puzzle like a sudoku applies to writing code. I want to see my end result work, and putting all the steps together in my code is enough to keep me up late.

2. I am oddly excited about learning and applying best practices. Often I initially solve a problem by mimicking existing patterns. Then I will spend hours pouring over man pages and standard library documentation in order to figure out the best way to do something.

For me, everything else feeds into those two basic motivations. In my career I get to apply those concepts at a larger scale. I'm finding that my motivations extend to domains other than code, both in my career and in my personal life.

I encourage you to reflect and consider the moments when you felt the most joy and the moments when you felt the least joy, and what was different between them.