Programming is a Terrible Job

I would say that if you work on a very large scale system with an explicit way of how things are done and there is extreme rigidity in doing anything differently than the job gets tedious quite fast.

I would venture to say that most developers do not fall into this category and have more autonomy (even if that is just building a CRUD web app). Most code isn't peer reviewed and the emphasis is on getting results. Within those boundaries one can do so much to keep things interesting.

I also find it interesting that as developers we sometimes feel frustrated that the end users don't understand or care about the complexity of the implementation and how much may have gone to just that single push of the button on the screen.

How much do you care about the complexity of your car, or the countless bridges that one may drive through? I can sense the complexity behind it but at the end of the day, I enjoy that is come down to turning on the ignition.

Every profession has these issues. Ask the newly grad civil engineer who's tasked to work on a bridge. What do you think they get to do? They get handed the mother of all books on how a bridge is built and everything important that needs to be considered. Their job becomes one of plug and play as there is only so many ways one can build a safe bridge. I had one of my professors relate this story and he couldn't handle it. He went on to graduate school and become an engineering professor.

For better or worse, we get some say on how that bridge gets built, as long as it stays and functions as a bridge by the end of it.

I find a lot of developers just give up, shifting responsibility from internally to external factors. It's hard to see someone just going through the motions, not evening really trying because the job has become "boring". It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as the company starts to recognize this and eventually puts someone more inclined in the same position.

The nice thing about computer science is you can make a decent living out of your hobby. The not so nice thing - you have to do what people pay you to do, whether they are customers are bosses. It's still a much better living than a poetry expert makes.

They endure that life because they know the door that opens to the field where they can do what they want is only reachable through this muddy road.

I program both for work and for fun, and I can understand that. (I also act, only occasionally, and yeah, regular programming job is a lot more stable and low-risk, so it's understandable that the upside is a lot lower.)

My advice would be - become a solver of other people's problems who happens to know how to develop software.

This may sound like a futile exercise in semantics, but believe me, this subtle little shift in thinking has made all the difference...

In order to escape OP's "boring as shit" programming life and have a ball turning nothing into something, one has to change their perspective: It's not about the code, or the elegance, or us, or what we become; it's about solving our customers' problems. That's it.

It doesn't matter if the solution requires the most elegant algorithm ever conceived or smacking someone on the side of the head; solving the problem is where the rush comes from. The elegant and cool code is the byproduct.

Once OP understands this, he'll be too busy building and solving to rant.