Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

Using Jira made me hate coding. The fix was to not work for anyone who made me use it.

The problem with this is that everyone jumps on new fads so quickly that, if you don't, you're likely to endup with a bug-ridden, half-baked, vulnerability-riddled, unmaintained/abandoned, slowly collapsing, termite-infested framework as the basis of your entire SAAS business, or whatever it is you're trying to run on something that even the creators abandoned for the next fad.

> What happens to me, personally, is I start on some new project or company using a pretty recent stack at the time. Over the course of the next few years, that stack becomes "outdated" as new things are released. However, it also matures as its documentation improves and its community grows.

You have to be very, very lucky to accidentally end up with a "pretty recent stack" that will still be maintained in five years. On the other hand, the next part shows that you don't actually go with the 5+ year old "stood the test of time" tools:

> Eventually, after 2-5 years, I move on to another project, and just take that time to catch up on the latest.

Having to learn a whole new sub-ecosystem in as little as two years is exactly the kind of mind-destroying grind everyone's complaining about. I don't think anyone's just jumping on the newest thing that appears every six months; they're all just having to move to some new toolset every two to five years and burning out ten years into a career because otherwise they'll end up having to be the new maintainers of whatever tools they're using due to the fact nobody else is using them (and thus no one else is maintaining them) any longer.

I reached the point where I'd sort my list, look at the things at the top and think, "I know these things are important, and it's certainly gratifying to have the influence and the authority to try to make these changes... but I kind of don't really care."

At that point, I realized that if something didn't change I was eventually going to get fed up and leave the project entirely, leaving a big hole. So, I said that I'd set aside Friday to do some "fun" programming, to keep the job interesting. (I ran this by my boss, and he was supportive.) I thought this "fun" would have to be something really different and new, but it turns out nearly any kind of programming will do; so although I mentally give myself permission to do whatever I want on those days if I need to, I often end up just writing "normal" "important" code from the top of my to-do list. Just that little bit is enough to "pay" for the rest of the week.

Joy is the source of our power as human beings. No human activity is sustainable long-term if the psychological cost of doing something outweighs the psychological benefit; and conversely, people can endure an amazing amount of hardship and toil if the activity is a source of joy. The key to sustainable work, relationships, whatever is to be looking for ways to find joy in those activities.

What works for me to re-connect with the technology, when once again being close or after to burn-out or in a bad cycle at work is to slow down and 'play' with the technology, and on my own pace.

Years ago I worked in gamedev, so when challenging mental times hit, I sometimes tend to come back and just 'play' a bit with graphics, visualisations, interactive environments, simulations. I am fully aware that I am not going to compare with professional game engines, but it's just to enjoy the creative process, to freely play with ideas; to no care about lines of code / modules that won't pass code review, etc. hence also not being too much restricted by any frameworks if possible. Let the ideas flow once again and let the mind create.

As a side note, not so long ago, I also bought Raspberry Pi with a pretty nice, affordable kit of sensors. Electronics is fun, when apart from creating stuff virtually, you can create it 'outside'. You can touch it, you can hear it (and even can sometimes smell it when burns) and can control stuff writing own simple scripts. Installing Jupyter Hub on Raspberry Pi and playing interactively with sensors and collected data in Python and is just another fun moment, opening further possibilities to explore.

Good luck and, really, try to have fun!