21–30 of 112 posts
I play tabletop games and lacked a good tool to plan dungeons as a DM. So I wrote a dungeon planning tool. ( https://h4kor.github.io/dungeon-planner/ )
I like blogging, so I wrote my own blog software ( https://github.com/H4kor/owl-blogs ) as I disliked WordPress and static sites were too limiting for me.
Find something you deeply believe is worthwhile. Something like volunteerinfor homeless, helping war victims, religion. Make this your anchor point.
I'd recommend to keep looking into things that you find interesting, just for fun. I've really enjoyed messing around with graphic shaders recently, which I have no use for. But the more tools on the bag the easier it is to find opportunities to do useful things.
I still try to find useful things to do though, maybe one of those weekend projects can grow into a larger project, it would be really cool. But I don't see much point into trying to come up with something just for the sake of it. I'm reminded of that guy in Spain building a cathedral by himself. Not that there's anything wrong to building a cathedral by yourself if that's what you want, but pretty much the only reason to do it is that, because you feel like it.
Have kids or get a hobby. I'm in the same boat tbh, I don't find interesting things with programming anymore, maybe when I did it was just that I had less other stuff to do. I'd rather learn something new now e.g. last year I started doing some home music recording/production. What is your goal - if you want to upskill for your career or to start a business, fine, if not find something else to do.
I was going to write something similar, "start a family". However, the problem is that that's not just something you _just do_ - it's not like you wake up one morning and decide, "I'm going to start a family", and boom! out come the rug rats. Getting a hobby is orders of magnitute easier.
Takes less time than getting good at a hobby really.
Games were already mentioned, and I share this recommendation. Those are usually fun, and you have the whole spectrum of tiny to huge, simple to very advanced, touching also basically the whole stack, almost the whole field of computer science, and beyond, as much as you want it.
Otherwise, maybe some electronics? Robotics? Machine learning?
Or think about your daily routine, at work or also privately. Isn't there anything you wished would exist or improved, which would make your life easier? I have countless of small little utilities which evolved with such motivation over the time.
> I just don't have any problems to solve with these tools It's possible you're placing too much emphasis on the type of problem you need to solve. You might be trying to think of a problem that many people experience, or a problem that others recognise as important, and getting frustrated that you don't have any ideas. If this is the case, I'd recommend making something for one person instead. Make something stupid,…
Yeah I think so as well. With as much experience as OP has it’s unlikely, if not impossible, to not experience problems or friction in terms of tech.
Sometimes they are completely unsolved, but much more frequently they are just solved poorly. “I wish it was easier to…” is an extremely good starting point. Personally I get these feelings from being lazy - I get annoyed when things are slow, tedious and most importantly complicated. I’m more of a “I can’t believe in 2024 it’s still hard to…”.
Conversely, the enemy of this mindset is “it’s just me being slow/dumb/lazy”, “a lot of smart people have already tried” etc etc.
It gonna sound somewhat esoteric but I think you need to completely let go to get to the good and fun ideas.
Have you considered the possibility that you're actually clinically depressed? Working on the assumption you are male, I think a lot of guys don't realise that low-grade depression looks like this for a lot of us. Especially getting towards mid-life.
One thing I would suggest is to embrace boredom. Cover up your television, delete your streaming video apps, cut back on social media as much as is possible, stop gaming if you game. Stop avoiding boredom with low-energy solutions.
Get really, really bored. Then see what your brain wants you to do. Boredom is a precursor to a creative state.
Another thought: consider if your "worthwhile" is actually helping other people do theirs? If you can learn new tools and languages easily, could you help others? Could you teach?
I need this change in my life too, and this is the direction I hope my life is heading in.