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Why I Love Coding (2012)

henrikwarne.com

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Re: Why I Love Coding (2012)

#41

Post by wildmanx »

cymon wrote: post #38
bitwize wrote: post #6

I got hooked on the feeling of power and control. When you're five years old (the age I was when I started programming "seriously"), it's an age when people start expecting things of you, making demands of you, but you are in no position to do likewise to others. The computer is a machine, not a person, but it's more like a person than other machines are (which is part of why it's so mystifying). It can follow instru…

Interesting you were coding at 5, I have 7 and 5 year olds who are pretty good with computers, can install and learn new games by themselves but I haven't considered introducing them to programming mainly because I don't feel they can manage and also it does not seem necessary...considering I personally started coding at the age of 20 when I joined university for my computer science degree and I have been fairly succ…

I think you are missing the point then of introducing them to programming.

It's not about career prospects. It's about joy and about learning a way to structured thoughts which few other activities can provide. A computer can't be argued with or tricked. It executes instructions. You can't beg it to be nice, you have to actually fix the bug. It won't betray you either. This very strict cause-and-effect property is a very important lesson that too few members of society have understood.

Re: Why I Love Coding (2012)

#44

Post by Barrin92 »

basq wrote: post #35
allenu wrote: post #19

I love coding too, basically for the same reasons. There’s something about creating things from scratch, making them better, and debugging issues that can’t be matched by other hobbies. You just have more control and speed in working on things versus physical things like working on an engine. That said, I don’t like the business of coding. Doing coding for a living strips away a lot of the joy out of it, but this is…

> Doing coding for a living strips away a lot of the joy out of it As someone with a lot of interests, I have found this to be true for every one of them. Seems like monetizing yourself is always soul sucking to some degree.

for me it's the difference between doing purely commercial work and treating it as a craft. I picked up woodworking years ago as a hobby, and after a while I started doing paid work for a bunch of friends and it really wasn't any less satisfying. When you build unique things that people really want to me it's no less interesting, same with programming. Once you start doing industrial style coding it becomes cumbersome.

Re: Why I Love Coding (2012)

#45

Post by weinzierl »

domano wrote: post #40
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s sad, to me, but I tend to have the author’s point of view. I support you in whatever endeavor to which your muse directs you. Having a background in coding generally means you’re a good problem-solver, and good problem-solvers are valuable in any vocation. In my case, I was a manager for the last 25 years of my career, and was forced to do my programming as a “nights and weekends” gig. Since leaving my last jo…

I have been in a more management or consulting focused role for 3 years now and i already fear that i am loosing my effectiveness as a programmer. How did the transition back to programming go for you?

I second this question. I find that "potentially loosing [..] effectiveness" is the least of the problems though, but that a few years of experience in management makes one essentially unhirable for positions that even involve some coding. I saw this from both sides of the table: as employee and hiring manager. It's also not a money problem, accepting less for a coding position does not work.

A career path back to coding just does not exist within the industry. Of course freelancing and founding your own company may be options but in a regular company hierarchy - no way in my experience.

I'd love to be proven wrong of course and I'd love to hear stories to the contrary.

Re: Why I Love Coding (2012)

#46

Post by FriedrichN »

the_only_law wrote: post #7

I feel like I’ve lost most of my interest in it. It’s been years since I’ve been truly excited by it and and motivated to do it, but I had been on and off the edge, losing interest for long periods of time before a random spark of motivation would bring it back, only to go out within a few months at most, and after the most recent spark, I’m not sure if I can see myself coming back to programming. It’s a strange feel…

It ebbs and flows for me, but I'll never get that excitement back from when I was a kid. I just have to get fulfillment from doing my job well, finding and creating an elegant solution to a stupid problem. Knowing I can do my job well helps a lot, especially when I compare what I offer to what my competitors sling out in the world. It's B2B software, so the bar is set very low as just about all B2B software is atrocious.

What also helps is having interests and hobbies that are in no way related to your job.

Re: Why I Love Coding (2012)

#47

Post by vaylian »

yeswecatan wrote: post #16

I love coding on my own projects. When it comes to work, I get so incredibly anxious about not being able to deliver a good solution. I obsess over every detail fearing I'll make the wrong choice ("this _could_ be a foreign key but should it be?" "Redis or postgres for this very crucial counter data") that most joy is completely stripped away. I admire and envy those who can hear unclear requirements and get excited…

Try to keep your code and architecture malleable (and documented) instead of optimizing everything upfront. Once you discover bottlenecks, you can actually spend time improving things.

Re: Why I Love Coding (2012)

#48

Post by sublimefire »

The set of "why's" is well put. But in a production environment, that pleasure is being squeezed out by processes, principles, capitalism. Programmer becomes like a machine that makes sure the necessary requirement is in place and then executes. Over time this flow brings cancer to the hacker soul. I fight it every day: sometimes by visiting HM to charge myself with ideas, sometimes by delaying the work and delving into some piece of the abstraction. The last bit just extends the delivery of a feature but brings long-awaited joy to the soul. Whether it is a new type of assertion in the testing framework or a more performant and elegant authentication logic or even an exploration of a new browser API. The rule is simple - for every piece of work for the devil, do something pleasing for yourself without any exception. Otherwise, the fingers of pleasure will tickle you only at night in your bedroom.

Re: Why I Love Coding (2012)

#49

Post by nly »

megamix wrote: post #27

Coding at work sucks. Coding at home is great as a hobby.

If you're lucky enough to actually write code (or preferably, solve problems) at work then you're already quite lucky.

I seem to spend all my time in meetings, preparing presentations, performing sysadmin tasks, testing things owned by other teams or external providers, looking things up for people, "resolving" tickets, communicating with other teams, chasing other teams, debugging internal infrastructure, doing code review, and being involved in a peripheral manner with more junior team members.

Apparently this is what being a "senior software engineer" is all about, and it really does suck.

My solution is to work on interesting things on the side and treat the day job for what it is: a ticket to financial independence before I'm 50. And if it all becomes too much, then the job market (for now) is at least very fluid.

Re: Why I Love Coding (2012)

#50

Post by mattikl »

the_only_law wrote: post #7

I feel like I’ve lost most of my interest in it. It’s been years since I’ve been truly excited by it and and motivated to do it, but I had been on and off the edge, losing interest for long periods of time before a random spark of motivation would bring it back, only to go out within a few months at most, and after the most recent spark, I’m not sure if I can see myself coming back to programming. It’s a strange feel…

I've also lost interest many times during my 25 years of coding, but now I feel excited as ever again.

One of key realizations has been that I'm more interested in people than machines (even though I feel the same fascination figuring out how something works). In the end, software is almost always for people to use. Things like programming language design easily get regarded as highly technical, but it's so much about creating abstractions for humans to create abstractions for humans.

Another one has been learning how software fits the bigger picture. In order for a company to succeed with software, things starting from vision, strategy, execution need to be in line. What I'm trying to say that it's important to notice when the development of software gets blamed for problems elsewhere. Otherwise our view of the development itself gets murkier.

Finally, learning new languages is something that's keeping it fresh for me. Making the effort to dig deeper and learn something complex I didn't know well before.

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