Ask HN: I just want to have fun programming again

Exactly, there are plenty of frameworks which make this possible but even with the best you are hitting plenty of potholes adding incidental complexity on the way to a polished end product.

Limit ambitions and focus on getting velocity into roughly the right direction. Have fun and worry not about having fun.

Pick a language that speaks to you and use it. Ignore any technical bike shedding in your head. I like Rust and continue to hack on projects in it, but my happy place is Go. It is safe enough, productive enough, and checks all my boxes for serious hobby work. Find your own happy environment and projects

Meh. I enjoy doing full stack javascript work over all other stack including Go. To each their own I guess.

Generally when this happens it is because of context. You are clearly setting out to have fun and searching for the joy you did find originally. Most of the time this context is either the problem space, team/political issues or the random tooling in the ecosystem that complicates a solution for better or worse.

I'd say your best bet is find something cool you would like to build. Ideally, there will be some part you have to deeply focus on a tech problem that will require you to stop thinking about anything else and really immerse yourself. This would count even if it is only a few hours.

I've found it fun and useful to have a small list of tools/utils or mini projects that I could use day to day or even something I could just randomly say I built. It is also usually the case that for tech people the most joy comes from the idea and early stages of creation and then finally shipping it. I'd say it would be best to have one or two small projects you can definitely wrap up instead of a massive one that becomes a drudge.

Also focus on truly how much power we have with computers. It is one of the only disciplines where the biggest and almost only limitation is what you can imagine and design.

It is awesome to see all the comments in this thread recommending some form of embedded programming as a side project. I strongly recommend it too.

Here's my own fun embedded programming project... it's been 5 years now, so I should really do something like this again:

https://foundrytechnologies.com/relay.php

It didn't too well commercially, perhaps because the 3d-printed case I designed for it in looked a bit cheap. But the embedded coding was very fun, as well as putting all the pieces together (embedded coding, website & web app, PCB design, CAD and 3d-printing were all involved).

I did sell a few units, and shipped them worldwide. I still see them checking in with the server for updates every 5 minutes from around the world, and there's about half a dozen working around my house today, including one outside by the front door bell. That one's been exposed to the Texas elements for 5 years now and hasn't missed a beat, except that it needed a new case last year to keep it looking fresh.