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Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do?

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Re: Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do?

#111

Post by beambot »

Franciscodr wrote: post #91
beambot wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any of these are fine... but don't shy away from activities that aren't "pure software": Play with hardware (robots!), learn to weld, go play tennis, go scuba diving. Along the way, you might find {activities, collaborators, products, ideas} that get you really excited. And since it's not "pure software" there will almost certainly be lots of opportunities to have a major impact! Software is eating the world, and alm…

Hi beambot! That's great! Many of us have done the other way: approaching programming via robots. If you are tired on programming, do something that moves AFK: create a robot. You can start from small. There are hundreds of people sharing their insights so you can learn fast and do your own. Try here: letsmakerobots.com Francisco

Indeed, i agree. (I have a PhD in robotics... See profile.)

Re: Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do?

#112

Post by scotty79 »

>Quite frankly many years of self hacking/studying and experience in industry, I think I've just had it with software industry. Does it get any better ? Am I seeing things correctly ? Is this a burnout ?

You need to realize that what you think is not the source of your feelings, even though it seems like it.

It's actually the other way around. What you feel dictates what you think about the stuff you have contact with in life.

If you are sad, you start thinking hopeless thoughts about what you do, about who you interact with. Those thought seem objective and you are led to believe that they are source of your feeling because they deepen it.

But that's not the case. The source of all this downward spiral is the feelings.

To get out you need to do things that are counter-intuitive to you. Stop reading. Don't drink alcohol. Cut off the things you were doing to comfort yourself. They are not working. Force yourself to find new ones. Meet new people that are passionate about the things you have no idea about, listen to them, go outside into the woods and be bored. Run. Take many hour walks preferably around some trees. Basically do all the physical stuff that was found to reduce depression. If you have a partner, interact with her, listen, agree, do things together, don't worry you are bored and faking it, just perform well. When you make her feel better she will make you feel better a little bit.

Realizing helps, that actual content of your thoughts is virtual because it's induced by the way you feel. If you felt better you would think completely different thoughts about same things.

Re: Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do?

#113

Post by logn »

ak39 wrote: post #90
yankoff wrote: post #22

Try diving deeper into real CS, there is the entire world of things that can revive your passion. If you mainly were focused on building CRUD apps and websites it's not surprising to get bored and burned out. Get out of your typical routines and try finding challenging stuff to do. Some ideas: * Figure out how to write AI for games. A simple example would be, how to write a bot that finds shortest path out of labyrin…

An Ode to "CRUD" Apps: There's nothing unexciting or less complicated or challenging about producing good CRUD [sic] applications. I don't understand the industry cynicism towards producing good quality "bread and butter" software for any vertical market. It takes years of experience to learn good (relational) data modeling. It takes years of dedicated attention to assemble tried, tested and efficient user interface…

I think what bothers programmers is that creation of CRUD apps seem like something that could be automated/abstracted. And it partly has been, which is why so many freelance jobs involving Wordpress, Magento, Salesforce, etc.

Re: Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do?

#114

Post by S-nickname »

The language war it probably will always be, its just like soccer teams (or any sport)

A couple of years ago I've read about Lisp, and I started picking on it. At first I didn't get whats the point, already knowing Java and C. But months later, I got a course in which we used Haskell. And then functional programming started to make more sense.

Recently I got interested in Lambda Calculus, which is in the same branch of functional programming. And for me its amazing, seeing this different languages. And also making contrast with imperative or OO programming. Cause they are different way of expressing, each with its own advantages/disadvantages.

And there's also prolog, which I plan to pick up next...

So my point is, I personally like to learn about other languages. I have colleague friends who told me, "But why Haskell, what is it for?, I can do it in Python" "You can't do real-world applications with that", things like that. And for me, it's about learning, it's not only "what is popular" or "what will get you a job". It goes beyond that.

Re: Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do?

#115

Post by pm24601 »

n0us wrote: post #23
CyberFonic wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd sooner build a boat and sail away.

The two happiest days in a boat owner's life are the day he/she buys his boat and the day he/she sells it. Trust me, you don't want to build a boat. But I get the sentiment.

From my sister who owns a small motor boat.

"BOAT" = "Break Out Another Thousand"

enuf said:-)

Re: Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do?

#117

Post by bjelkeman-again »

leap_ahead wrote: post #9

I was there some years ago. I realized that the root cause of the problem was focusing on the wrong things (at least they were wrong for me). Tools are just that - they are tools. Granted, there are many of them, new and shining, coming in all packages, but that gets tiresome after you've spent a substantial period of time with them. They are all essentially the same and sooner or later you lose interest in them. Wha…

I did exactly that. Ended up creating something new. It has meaning and it worked.

Re: Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do?

#118

Post by irascible »

Sounds like burnout. I take a month or 2 off for every year I work.. sometimes at the start of that break, I feel like you do, but a bit of sun on my face and some outdoors, and suddenly the desire to sit inside and code for hours, starts to return. :D

Re: Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do?

#119

Post by PopeOfNope »

ak39 wrote: post #90
yankoff wrote: post #22

Try diving deeper into real CS, there is the entire world of things that can revive your passion. If you mainly were focused on building CRUD apps and websites it's not surprising to get bored and burned out. Get out of your typical routines and try finding challenging stuff to do. Some ideas: * Figure out how to write AI for games. A simple example would be, how to write a bot that finds shortest path out of labyrin…

An Ode to "CRUD" Apps: There's nothing unexciting or less complicated or challenging about producing good CRUD [sic] applications. I don't understand the industry cynicism towards producing good quality "bread and butter" software for any vertical market. It takes years of experience to learn good (relational) data modeling. It takes years of dedicated attention to assemble tried, tested and efficient user interface…

CRUD apps are to programmers what walls are to carpenters. There may be an artistry to making good walls and there are lots of ways the task can be made challenging. But, 99% of the time, the customer doesn't care about the artistry that you put into the wall. They just want the damned thing up as fast and as cheaply as humanly possible. I think that might be where the root of the OP's boredom comes from. Doing the same (relatively) low skill task over and over for years would make anybody bored.

Re: Ask HN: I am 30+ and bored with life and the software industry, what do I do?

#120

Post by PopeOfNope »

bprater wrote: post #87
zippy786 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to love low-level graphics programming (drawing polygons, fractals), closely worked with people doing kernel stuff, have a CS degree in Machine learning, doing infosec for fun and have dealt with quite a bit of distributed/system/database stuff to scale. After some time, these challenging stuff have the same problem, being mundane. Specially constraint of work environment and people you have to deal with. Plus…

How does someone like John Carmack continue to find passionate areas of interest for himself? He's still painting pixels on a screen, but he seems to continue to explore parts of his programming palette that excite him -- most recently, Occulus Rift. If you are truly not feeling inspired for anything programmatic, maybe it's best to take some time off and wait for new inspiration to strike.

He also answers to nobody. If you want to escape the constraint of the work environment, you have to found your own company or go freelance.
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