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Ask HN: Ever lost your love for coding? How did you get it back?

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Re: Ask HN: Ever lost your love for coding? How did you get it back?

#31

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

monster_group wrote: post #17
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #11

I was thinking the same scrolling HN, then saw your post. After 15 years I'm no longer interested. I don't care about the web, css, javascript, react, testing....it's just an increasingly tedious and difficult headache to me. I have a creative urge, and a problem solving urge, but i feel maybe it can be better expressed through another medium. I just wish I had some way to unchain myself from this 9-6 5 days a week s…

Add to that - one is still writing CRUD apps that seem to run slower than ever even though the computers have become faster. That's why I feel more drawn to my guitar now than computer but then guitar will never make me any money so need to keep churning out CRUD apps.

yeah, i was just thinking today how slow and bloated the web feels. i know things have always been slow, maybe rose-tinted lenses and that but there shouldn't be lag on an input box when using a 2020 mbp with 64GB of ram.

and the frustration of trying to stream a video on reddit whilst the ad seems to have no trouble loading and playing.

Re: Ask HN: Ever lost your love for coding? How did you get it back?

#34

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #11

I was thinking the same scrolling HN, then saw your post. After 15 years I'm no longer interested. I don't care about the web, css, javascript, react, testing....it's just an increasingly tedious and difficult headache to me. I have a creative urge, and a problem solving urge, but i feel maybe it can be better expressed through another medium. I just wish I had some way to unchain myself from this 9-6 5 days a week s…

Pretty much going to have to echo this. The increasing needless complexity in everything has driven me to no longer be interested in technology in general, and it seems that our industry is only interested in making it even worse as time goes on.

I have tried to get myself motivated to do programming projects again and it just isn't taking.

Re: Ask HN: Ever lost your love for coding? How did you get it back?

#35

Post by jacknews »

If you have time, try another style of coding.

CRUD and business coding can get quite tedious, especially under artificial pressure, for example to hit arbitrary management deadlines, which just fuel resentment.

Try writing a game in a new language. If you have kids, teach them to write a game, while learning yourself, eg in something simple like lua.

For me, programming 'in the small', optimizing loops for example, is much more satisfying than modeling complex or byzantine business systems with sprawling code.

Re: Ask HN: Ever lost your love for coding? How did you get it back?

#36

Post by throwawaywindev »

After 15 years I realized that all the code I’ve ever written is nothing fancier than a clumsily wired breadboard. I’m transitioning to engineering management as I get way more out of coaching, planning, and product management, and it’s a lot more challenging and rewarding.

I can still scratch the coding itch by writing scripts or utilities or visualizations. Writing something for just me or five people is just as satisfying as writing something for a billion people.

Re: Ask HN: Ever lost your love for coding? How did you get it back?

#37

Post by bostonsre »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #11

I was thinking the same scrolling HN, then saw your post. After 15 years I'm no longer interested. I don't care about the web, css, javascript, react, testing....it's just an increasingly tedious and difficult headache to me. I have a creative urge, and a problem solving urge, but i feel maybe it can be better expressed through another medium. I just wish I had some way to unchain myself from this 9-6 5 days a week s…

I'm on the infrastructure side, so I'm not sure if what I'm saying is true, but you could try taking a look further towards the backend. I'm under the impression that front end work can be a little messy, but again it's not from first hand experience. Beautiful and elegant solutions that solve problems well are a lot not fun to work on for me. Troubleshooting and fixing someone else's mess tends to burn me out a lot more quickly.

Re: Ask HN: Ever lost your love for coding? How did you get it back?

#38

Post by Dumblydorr »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #34
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #11

I was thinking the same scrolling HN, then saw your post. After 15 years I'm no longer interested. I don't care about the web, css, javascript, react, testing....it's just an increasingly tedious and difficult headache to me. I have a creative urge, and a problem solving urge, but i feel maybe it can be better expressed through another medium. I just wish I had some way to unchain myself from this 9-6 5 days a week s…

Pretty much going to have to echo this. The increasing needless complexity in everything has driven me to no longer be interested in technology in general, and it seems that our industry is only interested in making it even worse as time goes on. I have tried to get myself motivated to do programming projects again and it just isn't taking.

The industry would see the complexity increase not as a bug but a feature. Every complexity is some improvement, some advantage, being marketed or sold, with promises of performance and outcomes but with realities of headaches and bugs. It doesn't help most complexities are someone's company that they want to sell for a huge M&A profit.

Re: Ask HN: Ever lost your love for coding? How did you get it back?

#39

Post by roognarook »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #11

I was thinking the same scrolling HN, then saw your post. After 15 years I'm no longer interested. I don't care about the web, css, javascript, react, testing....it's just an increasingly tedious and difficult headache to me. I have a creative urge, and a problem solving urge, but i feel maybe it can be better expressed through another medium. I just wish I had some way to unchain myself from this 9-6 5 days a week s…

Ever think about trying embedded development?

It doesn't pay as well as web development. But it moves more slowly, it's not going anywhere, and it can be a stepping stone towards getting to work with your hands in a technical role.

As a more general response to OP's question, you can always switch industries. We're lucky to work with code, because everything runs on it. Finance, agriculture, medicine, vehicles...moving to a different area of the economy can feel refreshing, and it gives you a chance to learn about things that are unrelated to coding. Soulless web dev is where the big money is, but you won't starve working in other areas.

Re: Ask HN: Ever lost your love for coding? How did you get it back?

#40

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #31
monster_group wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add to that - one is still writing CRUD apps that seem to run slower than ever even though the computers have become faster. That's why I feel more drawn to my guitar now than computer but then guitar will never make me any money so need to keep churning out CRUD apps.

yeah, i was just thinking today how slow and bloated the web feels. i know things have always been slow, maybe rose-tinted lenses and that but there shouldn't be lag on an input box when using a 2020 mbp with 64GB of ram. and the frustration of trying to stream a video on reddit whilst the ad seems to have no trouble loading and playing.

I was complaining about this just yesterday[0], while waiting for my media PC, a dual core AMD APU with 8Gb of ram, to scroll the Twitch categories page. I pointed out to a friend a few minutes later how we were watching a game from 1999, which rendered full 3D environments in real time at 60+fps on a 200Mhz pentium with 32MB of ram. Here we are in 2021 with a computer several orders of magnitude more powerful and it is struggling to scroll a fucking document.

[0] to be fair, I complain about this at least 3 times a day, sometimes to an empty room.

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