81–90 of 125 posts
I love coding. Only issue I have is that I don't talk to many people during the day. I rent an office and I just sit at work the whole day. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but I wish there was a setting in which I could network with more people. What has worked for you?
That impermanence makes me feel it was never intrinsically valuable.
There need be no real danger of it ever becoming a drudge, for any processes that are quite mechanical may be turned over to the machine itself.
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…
Getting past the "fear of getting it wrong" is a powerful skill. Learning that it's actually easier to fix a mistake than to get something right first time is the first step to developing that skill.
I used to like making things that are useful to other people (2), but just us people quickly switch to your shiny new thing, they quickly switch away to the next shiny new thing. That impermanence makes me feel it was never intrinsically valuable.
I think we can't accurately predict the extent to which our work will be valuable to someone else. The Feynman perspective I came across is that we should "play", follow those kernels of interest whatever they may be, and that may turn into "something". Whether intuition, foolishness, whatever, having curiosity/interest feels good.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 co…
Why does management experience make you unhirable? I do program every now and then in my spare time, but not to the extent the original commenter does in his spare time. Interview wise i am doing fine, albeit not for FAANG type roles.
I used to like making things that are useful to other people (2), but just us people quickly switch to your shiny new thing, they quickly switch away to the next shiny new thing. That impermanence makes me feel it was never intrinsically valuable.
Everything is ultimately impermanent. I think over time novelty-seeking takes more of a backseat to the work itself (from which to draw value), whether or not we rationalize it's importance. You can probably argue for or against the value of anything, the more detached and objective you try to be about it and after enough scrutiny, nothing we make feels valuable. I think we can't accurately predict the extent to whic…
But that's real hard.
I agree with the "play" attitude having a sense of intrinsic value, regardless of newness, importance or usefulness.
There really is a special kind of satisfaction when you see something you wrote actually work. I remember the first time I made a sprite move around the screen with arrow keys, I probably moved that guy around for several minutes just out of pride. I'm sure we all have similar memories.
I think your second sentence is actually the key here - first time. If you do something day in day out for 20 years there’s no surprise if it works.
Thankfully, there’s plenty of room in the domain of programming for someone to go from seasoned expert to absolute beginner and experience the joy all over again.