Sounds like the poster has a job he doesn't enjoy. Might want to continue looking for a company that provides opportunities more in line with what he wants. Simple as that.
Programming is a Terrible Job
171–180 of 296 posts
Re: Programming is a Terrible Job
#172If you don't like web development, learn something else. The only reason you're not doing something you love is because you haven't put in the effort.
Right now, I write fault-tolerant, distributed systems in Go for a living. I really enjoy it. But a decade ago, my first programming jobs were building websites in ASP (pre-.NET), PHP, and ColdFusion for a little over minimum wage. There are truly very few software tasks worse than writing ColdFusion.
I now count myself as proficient in a number of languages and I've done all kinds of different things over the course of my career. My latest side project is learning game development. Maybe my next job will be doing that?
If you don't like what you do, make the choice to do something else, then take the steps to make that goal a reality. You never know where you'll end up, unless you lack the energy or courage to try.
Re: Programming is a Terrible Job
#173After working for a large IT shop for over 9 years (not there anymore :-D), I completely "get" this post. However, I have to say, we're spoiled. There are a lot of ways you can do worse.
Growing up, I often worked summer jobs that were either construction or factory work, right beside men in their 30s and 40s. Some days the weather was over 100 and we were expected to work in it for 9 or more hours. Some days we were doing something near a chicken plant where I had to put up with an unbearable odor the entire day. Often times, our only available toilet was of the portable kind. I've been a ditch digger. I've been up on a metal roof in that 100+ degree weather. I've spent 8 hours consecutively (with the exception of lunch) doing the exact same thing every 30 seconds.
Programming isn't so bad, by comparison.
Re: Programming is a Terrible Job
#174I can usually make tedious programming tasks rewarding by focusing on software craftsmanship.
If I have to write a TPS report generator, I will try to make it the most concise, reusable, tested and well documented TPS report generator that the world has ever seen.
Re: Programming is a Terrible Job
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
protip: Be a very picky freelancer and only work on projects that interest you.
Bingo! Been there for a few years now. It's awesome. :)
Not always possible. I have something like that, then 3 months in the road the company lost his biggest customer and chop down the project/team!
Re: Programming is a Terrible Job
#176I can usually make tedious programming tasks rewarding by focusing on software craftsmanship. If I have to write a TPS report generator, I will try to make it the most concise, reusable, tested and well documented TPS report generator that the world has ever seen.
Ditto for me, although I'd also probably write it in OCaml or some other new-to-me language just for fun.
Re: Programming is a Terrible Job
#177I felt the same way. I quit. I'm still unemployed. I will admit the job I had wasn't nearly as dreary, but I was still plagued by the fact that what I was doing was utterly pointless and had zero value. In retrospect, I wish I had just grown the fuck up and accepted the simple fact that the chances of any person on this earth making his or her life meaningful outside of his or her own family are astronomically slim.…
Thank you. I think about quitting every single day, but this fear lets me grind through the day. Being unemployed is just no option if you're not alone/have family.
Look at it this way, if programming were fun, people would do it for free (and many people do) but if you want to make money at it, you are going to not enjoy everything. That's the trade you make, they give you money to do something which you might not enjoy.
Re: Programming is a Terrible Job
#178[deleted]
Re: Programming is a Terrible Job
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why do football players, musicians and movie actors get payed 1000x as much as the software engineers who made the technology to make possible their success? Do you think their jobs are cake walks? You think football players really enjoy the training, really enjoy destroying their bodies on a weekly basis? You think musicians haven't toiled for years and years making no money at all before reaching the level where…
Seconded. It reminds me of a quote from Muhammad Ali: “I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion'.” Now I'm not going to say that every athlete or musician is like that, which is part of the point; reality generally defies generalizations, but I will say that discounting the work professional athletes put in is a bit narrow minded, regardless of…
Another quote I've heard and liked: "Training is like wrestling with a gorilla. You don't stop when you're tired. You stop when the gorilla is tired."
And the gorilla is never tired.
Re: Programming is a Terrible Job
#180Nobody seems to be addressing the author's recommendation about specializing instead of being "just" a software engineer. Is specialization really the road to less boring coding? As a recent entrant into the working world I find myself thinking that may be the road to more interesting work, but don't have much of an idea about what the day-to-day work of a specialist is.
Specialization leads to the big bucks, it's also easier to dodge crap code that is outside your specialty.
It has nothing to do with boring/exciting, that depends on the project/company/coworker.