Why I Love Coding (2012)

Why I Love Coding (2012)
henrikwarne.com

It’s a strange feeling, as this has been my “thing” for many years now, both as a hobbyist and a professional. I can’t exactly pinpoint why the situation feels different this time. Until a few weeks ago I had dozens of interesting projects lined up and had invested money into at least a couple of them. I think part of it is that I lost a sense of “magic” that once enticed me. Whereas when I was still very new to me there was a lot of software I would think about and wonder “wow this seems incredibly complicated, I wonder how it works”. When I returned to learn about it whenever. A lot of thing seemed like sorcery, and I just needed to know how it worked. Well years later, when I decided to return to those sort of things, more experienced, I would start to dig in, only feel a bit disappointed when I figured it out and it was no longer cool or interesting. That’s not to say I’m an expert or that I know how everything works and implement it all, just that I can generally get the idea and that causes the magic to evaporate. Additionally I’m beginning notice a mismatch between interest and ability in a lot of things. I find myself unable to learn and implement the things I’m interested in. While that may sound like it’s in opposition with the my first theory, it’s not really. There’s a lot of things where I have a general mid-high level idea of how they work, but couldn’t implement if you asked me to right now.

I’m probably going to focus on other interests of mine for the time being, though I’m sure I’ll never truly be divorced from programming. Additionally, I have a feeling that the problems I noted in the previous paragraphs will eventually wither away my other interests as well. I figure simply return to it in a much different and reduced manor. I’m also considering giving it up professionally, but I’ll have to see how that ends up.