Ask HN: After 20 years of coding it is not a fun hobby anymore. How about you?

#1

Post by alex_x » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 7:43 AM UTC

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Re: Ask HN: After 20 years of coding it is not a fun hobby anymore. How about you?

#2

Post by johncoltrane » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 7:57 AM UTC

Coding _as a job_ stopped being fun a long time ago and I think it has a strong effect on my hobby choices. After a day of dealing with issue trackers, AI-generated accessibility reports and all that crap I find it harder and harder to switch to my side projects.

I've been logged out of my personal GitHub account for months, actually… and that's probably a good thing: more outdoors, more photography, more drawing, more reading, etc.

Re: Ask HN: After 20 years of coding it is not a fun hobby anymore. How about you?

#3

Post by JSR_FDED » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 9:13 AM UTC

I’m not there yet, but my vision for when I’m retired was always to spend leisurely time learning more stuff, building cool things, meeting up with fellow enthusiasts and perhaps coaching or mentoring others.

But it’s been quite unsettling the last year to realize that that probably isn’t going to be the retirement I’m going to have.

LLMs have made that whole thing feel pointless. Kind of like an athlete who loves his sport wondering if he’ll continue to get enjoyment out of it knowing that every person can just take a pill and be instantly as good.

Re: Ask HN: After 20 years of coding it is not a fun hobby anymore. How about you?

#4

Post by alex_x » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 9:36 AM UTC

johncoltrane wrote: post #2

Coding _as a job_ stopped being fun a long time ago and I think it has a strong effect on my hobby choices. After a day of dealing with issue trackers, AI-generated accessibility reports and all that crap I find it harder and harder to switch to my side projects. I've been logged out of my personal GitHub account for months, actually… and that's probably a good thing: more outdoors, more photography, more drawing, mo…

Agree on it being a good thing

Re: Ask HN: After 20 years of coding it is not a fun hobby anymore. How about you?

#5

Post by abstractspoon » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 1:35 PM UTC

I've just retired after 30 years of coding and still program as a hobby 3+ hours a day. FWIW I don't and never have used LLMs

Re: Ask HN: After 20 years of coding it is not a fun hobby anymore. How about you?

#6

Post by yev76 » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 3:50 PM UTC

25+ years in. What killed the fun wasn't coding, it was building other people's ideas - started my own product and the fun came right back. New twist though: agents take a while to run, so now I'm juggling a few tasks in parallel while they think.