Live a balanced and meaningful life now, via programming, rather than deferring satisfaction/contentment for some imagined future. If I retire some day, it's a bonus but I'm not waiting to be nearly dead to begin living in earnest. In other words, retirement is not a significant milestone when life is the journey rather that a destination.
What’s the end goal for you programmers?
41–50 of 83 posts
Re: What’s the end goal for you programmers?
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
for some parts of it, yes. I keep my body and emotional health in check and even do well for the most part, but I don't worry about my mental health all that much - I optimize for output with only modest regard for my mental health right now.
Becoming physically active and pursuing a healthy lifestyle actually increased my output.
Given enough contiguous blocks of time I could see that. Unfortunately my only option is to save and retire ASAP.
Re: What’s the end goal for you programmers?
#43I just want to build software once I retire. Ideally shiny things with little commercial potential or incredibly high risk.
There's stuff I don't like about the job - estimates, daily stand up, other meetings, investor-oriented development. Nearly all of that is gone with retirement.
The work isn't so much for money, but getting opportunities to practice building things better as an individual. I don't need to retire early; the work gives me practice and lets me meet plenty of mentors from different fields.
Re: What’s the end goal for you programmers?
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Developers in their 20s are definitely overpaid Why?
The 5 or 10 years experience they might have is pretty thin unless they have had extremely good mentoring. It takes more than a senior project and a few years as a junior dev to be worth much. I consider junior devs incubation projects. Some of them turn out nicely.
But many people think they're worth that. I don't think there is an intrinsic "worth" for each developer, demand is high, supply is low, that's why salaries are high.
Re: What’s the end goal for you programmers?
#45I like things that work, and I like making things that work. Coding has been a thing I do when I need to, but using the skill to investigate existing code has been the dominant practice.
Every time I reach a goal I move the cheese. I think I'm still getting better. But I'm also realizing the potential to pursue previously unknown goals. It is part of an ongoing discovery process that is not limited to engineering.
If I had a lot more money, I would probably pursue my goals differently but I don't think I would stop pursuing them.
Re: What’s the end goal for you programmers?
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I program for free, nowadays. I made enough, as a manager (which I hated ), to be able to retire early, at a fairly humble level (which was a good thing, because no one wants to hire "olds"), and I do work on nonprofit stuff. The project I'm working on now, would make a lot of Fortune 100 companies green with envy, and I'm doing it for free.
My career seems to be doing better because I'm crowding 50. I was expecting worse.
I suspect the biggest blocker for me, was that I was a manager.
Re: What’s the end goal for you programmers?
#47My dream is to have something like a performance institute, both mental and physical. I come from a war torn country and MDMA / Psychedelic (etc) research is proving to be very powerful for healing trauma and providing mental health benefits in general. I would love to help people with that. I'm also very active, I was a former bodybuilder then powerlifter who has now gotten into running ultra marathons. I have a few friends who are also into this and we chat about how we can get better all the time. We have home gyms but it would be nice to have a single facility. I also think it's super important to be active as you age, so I would love to help people on their old age active journeys. I think the niche that may get a foot in the door on this dream is helping my parents, expanding to their friends / other older people, and then getting to a point where I can include more serious athletes as well.
Re: What’s the end goal for you programmers?
#48I just like making useful stuff that helps people, and is a joy to use. For me, it's about the journey, more than the destination, but I still like completing all my projects. Part of the joy, is watching my work being used (and, sometimes, ab used) by others.
I love the idea of this but you read so many stories about the owners of open sourced projects not making a penny, whilst millions use their work and benefit financially. It’s difficult to do this when there’s belly’s to fill.
I don't really care. The stuff I write actually has a fairly significant impact on people's lives.
It is not hyperbole to say that some of the software I've written has saved many lives. Others tend to use a lot more hype to describe its impact than I would.
Re: What’s the end goal for you programmers?
#49I just want to build software once I retire. Ideally shiny things with little commercial potential or incredibly high risk. There's stuff I don't like about the job - estimates, daily stand up, other meetings, investor-oriented development. Nearly all of that is gone with retirement. The work isn't so much for money, but getting opportunities to practice building things better as an individual. I don't need to retire…
Same. At some point I'd love to figure out ways to get entertainment/game software built without sacrificing a team.
Re: What’s the end goal for you programmers?
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s great at your parents house but when you have kids to feed and a mortgage to pay, doing it for free is off the cards, no matter how much you love it.
I would never stop programming. It is a joy for me to do little utilities that makes my life easier. Even with billions of dollars in bank account I would still hack away at an ESP32 to stick it in a flying helicopter toy for example. And lucky for me this field is highly dynamic, I would never get bored learning new technologies. For me programming is like a kid with his shiny toys, every day another one. And I am p…
I can relate.