Ask HN: How to rediscover the joy of programming?

As a 9-5 programmer, I often found myself too mentally exhausted to do any coding outside of work. This meant that over the years, programming became just a job, and nothing more.

But once I changed career tracks, I found that I had the energy to write code after work. It actually felt like taking a break. I went from "I need to get away from the computer and go talk to people" to "I need to get away from people and just write code". And when I was writing code on my own terms, without any project managers or other people telling me what to do, it became fun again.

I'm not necessarily saying you should move into management too. I'm lucky that I enjoy the people side of the job, unlike a lot of programmers. But I think that if you put yourself in the same situation as you were in when you first discovered the joy of programming, you'll be able to rediscover it.

I jumped into React early-on (5 years ago), and it's still going strong, and has been for way longer than Angular / Backbone / ExtJs ever did.

I wouldn't say Express is abandoned, I feel it's more that it's "matured". I mean what else can you add / improve?

State management is still an un-settled area; 2 years ago it seemed like Redux was the best choice, but GraphQL / Apollo is eating its lunch. However, when you think about it it still follows a similar conceptual model, but making it even more declarative: You have your "store" (the query result), and you dispatch "actions" to modify that store (the mutations). You just don't have to dispatch an action to fetch data from the server anymore; Apollo handles that for you.

It's true that JS churned very fast for a long time, but I'm seeing signs of it slowing down as problem areas become "settled" one-by-one.

I stopped using frameworks, stopped using heavyweight runtimes, switched to a language that built and ran faster, and kicked out everything I didn’t like.

I can now focus on the actual problems I’m trying to solve instead of trying to work out how my problems fit into someone else’s idea of how to do things.

Just my 0.01c. Good luck.

I hate to say it, but I have given up on "enjoying" programming while it is still my career.

I will retire (or change careers) soon enough and will go back to enjoying coding as a hobby again.

In the mean time, I'm trying to enjoy all the fish.

I also brought this on when I was a tech lead. Twice a month we would do code katas. Where we would do exercises together in a new language, or library. To continue learning, see if we could do things better.

I ended up in a similar place Functional(ocaml/ML) and multi platform (shared code for back end, mobile, web, and ops).

One of the problems I'm having right now, and is making me want to leave software. I can't find many roles that match that style. My brain hard locks when I try and go back to OOP at this point. I love programming, and working with the community. But right now I feel like I'm banging my head into a wall. Has any one else had this problem?