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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?

#51

Post by cableshaft »

mdp2021 wrote: post #47
roognarook wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...movi…

> agriculture This I did not know. > vehicles This I hoped would never happen (security and privacy) - but anyway. (It has been a problem for well over a full decade, I know.) Anyway, as said, there is some light side: providing features while defending as much as possible security and privacy is a stimulating goal. One would feel more comfortable, though, if that were an established, common, given, granted goal.

Agriculture is more and more based on computers than ever. Massive expensive tractors with computers inside, that collect and visualize a tons of data as farmers tend to the fields. I watched a couple of farming videos online and it surprised me just how much they're integrated now.

https://www.theverge.com/22533735/john-deere-cto-hindman-dec...

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

#52

Post by dole »

roognarook wrote: post #39
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...movi…

It seems a little easier to go from embedded to app dev than vice versa, harder still to think up a personal project involving embedded to get you excited enough to invest the time into learning by hands-on trial and error.

I’d be interested in some started points, books, etc. to embedded, even beginner ELI5 fun projects. I am familiar to RPis, ESPs and similar microcontrollers for fun, but curious about what career and industry practices are common and different compared to app dev.

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

#53

Post by LaundroMat »

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…

What medium are you expressing your creative and problem-solving urges through now?

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

#54

Post by LaundroMat »

coldcode wrote: post #18

After 40 years (just retired) as a programmer, I still write code every day (but now what I want, mostly art related), I never got tired of writing code or learning new things, and the joy of shipping things that worked. What I did get tired of was high stress work, long hours, idiotic executive decisions and politics, businesses going out of business, interviewing (even when successful) and dealing with terrible wor…

Would you mind sharing some of the art-related projects you have been working on?

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

#55

Post by ultrasounder »

roognarook wrote: post #39
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...movi…

As an embedded systems guy(Hardware guy who works "on"embedded firmware), i can attest to the fact that its not going anywhere, but caveat emptor, Its glacial growth when you consider career growth and salaries. Also, the tech stack is tied to a couple of big name tooling chain vendors and chip vendors. And after writing the same old I2C/SPI driver for the nth time, you start feeling like the OP. So grass is always greener on the other side.

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

#56

Post by throwaway889900 »

_fat_santa wrote: post #2

I've never lost it but I for sure have my days where I wish I never became a SWE and became a baker or something instead. I don't know what sort of projects your coming from but I know big enterprise projects can really become a drag, couple that with politics and it's not a good mix. For me I always did some coding at home on my own projects. For me one of the most stressful things in coding professionally is dealin…

Crusty bread > crusty code

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

#57

Post by ultrasounder »

I am an embedded systems guy who recently started coding in React and I can relate my story if its useful to the OP or anyone for that matter. Apart from embedded code(C) and a few python scripts that i wrote for a course, i dont have any singificant experience. I started looking into browser develeopment during the pandemic and got hooked into React. The learning cruve felt like I was learning to drive all over again. But, in the end, I just sustained my interest and kept chugging. Fast forward a year, I stumbled upon a uservoice forum for a very popular enterprise chat app that lacks a basic feature that You would consider a brith right and the customers have been screaming for this feature for about 3 years now. Some of the comments show the customers are willing to pay for an add-on. I have been coding in the side for the past month or so and i am in the process of deploying the solution to their marketplace. I am in the process also am learning how to use their cloud deployment tools, create a static landing page for my app, scrape the users info from the uservoice and reach out to them and cold email them about the app when i release it. Point being, coding becomes an absolute chore if you dont have an end goal. Usually coding is a means to and end and that end is a business solution to a pressing problem. Find the problem and code the solution. Hope this anecdote helps.

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

#58

Post by toddh »

Sure, burnout is a real thing. Do lots of other things. Wait for an idea to find you. It should be just for you. It's not for money. Or ego. Ignore the devil on your shoulder that says it won't work, that it won't make money, that it's not furthering your career, that it's not solving the world's problems, that it's not padding your resume. Don't worry about how long it takes. What language it uses. What stack. What other people will think. Just do it because it interests you. If you still find that rewarding then your love is still there. If not, then perhaps the love has truly faded.

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

#59

Post by dgbillotte »

I started coding in the mid 90's and have been there, to different degrees, several times. It usually is because I'm in a rut, using the same languages and technologies in the same domain. Another new way to not shoot yourself in the foot with Javascript... So, mix it up and find something challenging that you find personally interesting:

- learn a language or technology that you've always wanted to, but never had a good "reason" to

- change your abstraction: if you are a javascripter learn C/C++ or assembly. If you are a VHDL guru, go learn some Python, Ruby, Elixir, or Javascript.

- Take one of the "how does that work?" questions that have been inside your brain since you first used a computer and get about figuring it out. The dang things are fascinating at every level, from transistors to gates, to operating systems, to compilers/interpreters, to micro-services *AND* it is all documented and available on the interwebs.

- learn more about your tools. There is nothing that makes me feel efficient and productive like when I'm jamming out code, making edits about as fast as I can think of them, floating from tool to tool in a smooth cycle of iterative development. Most of that is just patterns of keyboard shortcuts.

- program away the boring parts. If you have "boring" tasks, see if you can program or automate them away. The programming should be less boring than the task you are automating and you will have your first minion.

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

#60

Post by rlawson »

OP here - One of the things that really helped me get back into coding was to listen to podcasts. Especially "Django Chat" and "Talk Python to Me". I'd put them on while jogging and they really helped me to get a survey of the Django/Python ecosystem and also what a warm and welcoming community it is.
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