Why Programming Might Not Feel Fun Anymore

If you've been programming for a while and it doesn't seem as fun as it used to be, maybe it's time to take a step back and look at why. In this episode I'd like to help you figure out what the the root cause of your frustration with coding might be.
It's only natural that if you started off writing code and eventually got good at it, you'd come to the conclusion that programming is the best tech job for you. But there could be a better fit, or you may need to double down on persuasion and some other skills than just writing code.
When you're on too complicated of a tech stack, you haven't learned important soft skills like persuasion, and you make work your life - it's pretty likely that coding is going to start to suck. The good news is, you don't have to stay that way! By identifying which of these reasons for why you're not having as much fun programming apply to you, it's possible to start taking action today to get your tech career back on track.
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CHAPTER MARKERS
0:00 Introduction
0:40 Why Isn't Programming Fun Anymore?
0:56 1. You're Not Challenged
2:16 2. Programming Not Biggest Talent
4:23 3. Your Industry Is Boring
5:26 4. Tech Stack Too Complicated
6:28 5. You're Not Learning To Influence
8:09 6. Your Job Is Toxic
9:30 7. Work Is Your Life
11:18 Episode Groove
#programming #softwaredevelopment #softwareengineering

[@HealthyDev]

Is coding not as fun anymore? Why do you think that is? What are you going to do about it? ►► Know your options! Access my FREE data hub for the top 25 software industry roles, TechRolepedia → jaymeedwards.com/access-techrolepedia/

[@HealthyDev]

In point #6 I was trying to say “red herring” 😉

[@asagiai4965]

I guess first is simplify things for me. And talk things as much as possible.

[@InfernalStateMachine]

I've been coding for 10+ years, and my thoughts are, coding is just not as fun as it used to be, beacause of how the industry evolved. We have so many tools, libraries and standards that allow us to do more stuff, more efficiently, more reliably, more processed, but in the end of the day if just feels like I'm doing a very repetitive and boring work, while some years ago I felt like my job was a lot more creative. Writing a massive ugly wall of code felt more fun than drilling down APIs, updating dependencies, fixing CIs etc. I know maybe I'm a minority

[@frumpledpigskin]

Yeah it’s becoming more about integrations/utilizing existing solutions than writing custom logic/code because there is a library/framework/solution for almost everything already it feels like. And that just does feel, well not as fun

[@BrandtJorgensen]

Exactly! I feel like it’s about how to use libraries and tools as opposed to actually coding things with just a language.

[@dinesee1984]

Do you have any tips how to deal with this? I am at this point where I can either learn new framework/technology and implement it (but I see no reason to do it because it will be same solution but with just different technology) or focus on soft/leadership skills?

[@sdwone]

Nah! You're not alone! I've been coding on and off for quite a while now. I started way back in the 1980s during the 8-bit era, mainly games and other interesting apps. I also did some assembler too! But decided many years later to take up Physics at Uni instead. I then fell into teaching quite by accident upon graduation, and actually found that I had a natural talent for it. And taught hard STEM subjects, namely Maths, Physics and ICT, for well over 20 years. I enjoyed this career but, found myself wanting to get back into coding after a LONG hiatus! So, just before the turn of the millennium, I bought books and taught myself the new paradigms of object oriented programming via C++. I also did C to cover the low level basics... And then did C# a couple of years after that! And I absolutely LOVED it! So began my mission to try and enter the software industry with virtually no commercial experience, until I got lucky around 2013, when a family friend wanted me to build him a Web application. I didn't know any Javascript or frontend so, I simply learnt that too! And totally enjoyed the creativity of frontend development. Since I also launched his website on the Internet, I used that as proof of some commercial experience, and managed to land my first role, as a backend C# developer at a defence consultancy a few months later. And yeah, like you it's been just over 10 years now and I actually hit a wall during my last post as a senior full stack developer at an online charity company. I left last summer and haven't worked since! Living off savings and thinking about my next move... I still love coding but this industry has changed. And not for the better! As a senior dev at my last role, I hardly wrote any code. Simply fixing other people's bugs in a microservices architecture that would have made NASA proud because it was sooo convoluted, complex and utterly broken!!! I became so disillusioned as my role seemed to revolve around burndown charts, endless boring meetings and endless boring bug fixes. All the while as I was trying to get my head around repos that didn't build, services that didn't make sense and a culture that simply didn't have a clue on where they actually wanted to be, given that they were bought out by an American parent company who had other ideas. Starring at an empty IDE for hours on end, as I dreaded my next meeting, made it clear to me that I had to leave... Despite the very high salary! I mean I was a shadow of my former self... A bug hunter... A repo fixer... A wannabe cloud engineer, trying to grapple with, not just Azure but AWS! A man who used to be able to write any code from scratch, who now found himself with the daunting task of having to learn a multitude of databases, frameworks, package managers, Docker, Kubernetes, C# .NET updates, React, Angular, GraphQL... I mean it was ALL tech... Bug hunts... Log searches to locate exceptions from gawd knows what service... And absolutely minimal actual coding! I mean why classify myself as a developer, if I'm not actually doing any development!!!? Anyway, I don't intent to give up! I worked too hard to get into this industry so, I'm going to stick purely with contractual work from now on! I'm done with working directly for a company! All I care about is doing interesting work, hopefully alongside some interesting people. I did have a successful 18 month stint as a contractor and I absolutely loved it! Less meetings, no obligation to attend lunches or Xmas parties! I was there to do a job and that was to write and develop code! Not to fraternize, gossip or get involved in meaningless company politics! So long as I'm writing code I'm Happy! So yeah... I'm hoping to hit the ground running, once I get this Xmas and New Year out of the way, and get myself back on that horse. But yeah, I'm glad I took the break! Anyway.. Good Luck! And trust me, it's not you! It's this industry! It simply isn't the same anymore! With less emphasis on coding and more on tools. And with AI blowing up, I really feel that this career path might disappear within a generation or two... Which would be a real shame!

[@ryuhaneda]

Nope, you are most definitely not alone. Writing spaghetti code that worked after one or two tries was inefficient, flew in the face of Agile, Kanban, or whatever else was used, and it was fun. At the very least, it wasn't loaded down with requirements meetings, DAILY SCRUM CALLS, and other things that tried to measure metrics and turn it from a craft and trade into what feels like a cog in a machine. So no. You're not alone.

[@go_better]

Thanks. That's quite a humbling episode. Personally - I don't quite know what I'm doing anymore. When I work - I put all my energy into it, and I get burnt out after 1-2 years there. And no portfolio, no rethinking life choices, no private life, etc. Then, I spend my savings while recovering, and I get to find a job again. And the cycle goes on. About needing to learn how to persuade, how to influence - spot on. That is a bottleneck quite often. And, yeah, living to work, not working to live. Thank you for this window of points to reflect on. You are a gift.

[@ericroos8575]

Damn. This one felt like a therapist just ripping you open and saying what you needed to hear. Taking this one to heart. Great video.

[@paul-exclamation-mark]

Thank you so much for this timely video. I'm feeling that burnout right now. Programming is still fun to me, but my current "Enterprise job" has me feeling more like a Rube Goldberg machine repairman. Most of my time is spent wrestling with clunky in-house tooling, CI/CD, and "YAML engineering". I often my myself in the same situation over and over. My code will: - work on my machine running directly on host - work in local docker compose - work on a local test VM - work on a test VM inside a corporate subnet - work in docker-compose running on that same internal test VM It even works in minikube locally, and on test VMs... but somehow it's my responsibility to get it running in someone else's clunky CI/CD Rube Goldberg machine that we MUST use. 😅 I gotta get out of here.

[@tactical-ds]

Been feeling this way for awhile now! I'm going to be starting my own company this month to change it up and try to make things fun again!

[@denisblack9897]

same here, i've lived with no money eating potato + carrot + onion for 2 years to heal my burned out soul i'll be happy if my apps make even 500$ a month, all i want is never ever share a project with another human

[@go_better]

Good luck on it! That's awesome

[@TheMrVogue]

@@denisblack9897lmao, o how i feel that

[@CrisDevDotDot]

how's it going? genuinely interested in how perspectives look like right at the beginning

[@denisblack9897]

i've come to this after becoming a musician after programmer: programming is very very fun, but if you do it for money long enough it turns into work the trick is doing it for yourself, not for the money

[@fexofenadinaGenerica]

Yes. As other commented, programming jobs now are more integration of services and frameworks that coding. Also using AI tools to do a bunch of things. As someone starting the second year of a computer science degree, my goal is to land a job, where I would deal with frameworks, services, agile meetings and whatnot, for the money, and then code things from scratch as a hobby. Like DIY. There no point in DIY, other than do it for the sake of doing it, which is fun. Maybe I'm not being realistic here. I'll see soon enough.

[@JanPavlikdr]

Personally I love coding, I love to solve problems, I still can loose myself overnight to get things done for fun - after 20 years of coding. But as mentioned here, there are so many libraries, tools, utilities that you don’t actually coding but just putting thing together as puzzle pieces, I do work like this, most of my code is personalized. Also agile methodologies implemented wrong, estimates which it’s impossible to estimate, positions in team which basically make your life impossible trying to measure your productivity, etc. I wrap up my whole career in KISS idea and I still believe it’s the best way in this industry - for some who don’t know KISS - just keep it stupid simple. All my love to this channel! 😊

[@adrianpad]

4:23 I work at a company that deals with transactions between insurance (payers) and hospitals (providers). If this video is not life giving me a signal, I don't know what else is.

[@HealthyDev]

LOL! Well hopefully that's not the ENTIRE product architecture?

[@cherubin7th]

My issue right now that I code, but then I realize that I should have done it differently and I am in a cycle of creating and destroying it.

[@HealthyDev]

That's pretty normal. I think many people who don't write code have this flawed idea of "first draft programming". That is, that we write a good implementation on our first draft. There is definitely a balance between getting it working and having be of suitable quality - versus perfectionism though. I struggle with that myself. I would think any good developer who takes pride in his work probably does!

[@fpul]

I think you had a great comment with how we get into a job and we take what a manager says as what our career path should be. It's so very hard to, one, not even know what's available, but also how to switch to get to trying those new experiences. I'm still fighting this, and it's a massive amount of mental exertion to try and figure this out. I've found that in and of itself makes the day to day work difficult to get through.

[@kammy7222]

there's probably more people like me where it's never been fun, interesting or a good time to do, but as someone from a developing country, it pays well so it's a good thing to do in that sense

[@SaladoElFede]

I swear to linux kernel that you have a super power. I’ve been struggling at work as a Sr. Software Engineer because of this, and every time I saw a new video of this channel, I realized I was needing it without having a clue about it.

[@daganharrington9210]

"i swear to linux kernel"++ nice!

[@bernhardkrickl5197]

I've said it before but I'll say it again: It's good to have you back, Jayme! You're doing a really good job, first of all because you have a clear vision what this channel is about and second because you actually have something valuable to say, and something new with each video. Last but not least, the production is great. Well structured, recognisable, understandable. Great job!

[@HealthyDev]

Thanks for the kind words. Glad to hear the vision is getting a little clearer. It's been something I struggle with - a lot!

[@Nik930714]

For me it was electronics. I works in a company that design electronics products and i started there as an embedded developer. One day my boss comes over and says "Hey we need someone to design this printed circuit board, but the hardware guy is busy, can you do it?" I said "Sure, i've studied how to do this in uni, i can do it" and i started doing it part time in this company and i fell in love with it. I got better and better, to the point where the hardware guy has left that all behind and now focuses on software 100% of his time. I still write software 20-30% of my time and i find it fun for the first few weeks, maybe 2 months. If it's a high level language like C#, maybe a bit longer. For embedded C programming - 3 weeks tops. Embedded C/C++ is the thing i sharpened my teeth at when i started to learn about engineering in general and I'm good at it. I used to be super excited about working on an embedded system, but now i get exhausted just thinking about embedded programming. I wish we would hire more embedded developers so i could focus on the hardware side of things more, and the embedded devs can write code for the new products i design.

[@GPT-X938]

@4:34 that's literally what I do and lately I've felt so burnt out of programming, thinking it's not for me, and a lot of times feeling like an imposter at work. But I enjoy working on side projects and learning new things in general, so I know it's my 9-5 and not programming in general.

[@HealthyDev]

Just a thought, but if you're working 8 hours a day at it AND doing side projects, that could also burn you out on programming (happened to me).

[@johndoggett4657]

I really really appreciate your channel and all your advice. After watching this video I do have some soul searching to do. Lately for me burn out has been getting to me.

[@HealthyDev]

You're not alone. More people are getting burned out than ever. Some of it is the companies, but some of it is society pushing hustle culture as a badge of honor on people. Hope you get it figured out and find a healthy balance!

[@napillnik]

Hey, it's me again. Last time I complained about really bad architects at my current company. Now, you've put the nail in the coffin with "narcissists" and that it's time to get out of there. My former colleague and friend has made this job his life, and O kinda did the same, and stopped my hobbies, which are tech related as well. That's for me a clear sign of burn-out - when you stop doing what you used to love in your free time and instead kill time over dull activities like TV. I knew this day would eventually come, and I was well prepared to quit without having another job. Both I and my friend did that, and he's doing much better. But, I never stopped loving coding. And really the worst part of it is interacting with "assholes" - people who criticize what you do without offering any constructive hints, or try to tell you exactly what to do. Learning to deal with assholes, learning to ignore them correctly or navigate around them is an important skill to learn, in order to continue to be happy doing this.

[@milosCivejovidar]

It all comes from the difference of doing something you like vs. doing the same thing for money and on a deadline. I like to cook, I find it creative and relaxing. I thought about doing some cooking classes and advancing my skills in that direction. But then I realized that cooking for yourself vs. cooking 100 meals a night on a 20 min deadline is a completely different form of activity. And this translates pretty much to software development or any other form of job nicely.

[@thefrozensun]

Points #2 & #3 spoke to me the most. Liked the artistic part of coding growing up, but I had a hard time justify focusing on it when I had bills i needed to pay and i knew it wasn't my biggest skill. What keeps me going is that i have a great team and leadership and the project i work on is meaningful to help members in my community and abroad. Hadn't been the case, i would've left. However, maybe a bigger issue is that the job can be isolating and sedentary. Anyway, love your channel and podcast Jayme, i always recommend it to devs in the industry

[@HealthyDev]

Thanks for your support and spreading the word!

[@dtg5790]

Thanks for creating such valuable content. Now having 10+ years of experience, I think I've been through most of these at one point or another. The common thread throughout all of your points seem to be programming as it relates to work, which is instructive. The biggest thing for me when I am struggling to find my joy for programming at work is to make time for side projects. I also try to keep the scope of those projects realistic and not put too much pressure on myself, keeping it playful and putting it down when I am no longer interested or getting frustrated. For example, recently I've been learning how to write a basic ray tracer using SDL, which is totally different than what I would be doing in a professional context. My work life may not be the most interesting, but at least I can commit to making some time for myself to pursue my own interests. Having a clear separation between "work" and personal fulfillment can really help cope with a less than ideal work situation sometimes.

[@berniboern]

5:26 the problem with this point is that that's not up for you to decide. Often you come to a company and you have to adapt what they use

[@majorhumbert676]

It sucks nevertheless :/

[@hamsteroncoffee]

Ohhh, this speaks to me on so many levels... I used to love coding, spent the nights learning & such, but now, I am just tired of solving bugs, jumping between hoops aka frameworks, trying to understand spaghetti code. So tired..... Thanks for this video ❤! At least I know I am not alone in this, judging by this video & this comment section. Solution would be (at least in my eyes): spice it up! Just like in any other relationship!

[@comosaycomosah]

the guitar was a brilliant touch lol

[@reaper84]

It's not only the tech stack that might be too difficult, it's more that technology in general is getting more complicated all the time, and so is the demand for it. I remember, when you installed some JBOSS on a machine, and than deployed an EAR/WAR into it, and you were fine. Worst case scenario, you got a DB machine, and a SMTP server configured. When I started off programming as a kid, it was even easier. Some PHP code, MySQL database, baaam! You were online. Now... its like microservices, api gateways, rest endpoints everywhere, docker containers, infrastructure as code, cloud cloud cloud. Not even to mention the security concerns that you have now adays. Todays technology sure is very interesting and empowering, but often it feels like, that for every feature you bring to the customer, you have this huge pile of stuff you also need to take care of, and I personally don't enjoy it, cause it distracts from coding.

[@DuRoehre90210]

Maybe it's me but in the last couple of years it feels like the pendulum has swung far enough and we are getting close to the turnaround point. In the 201x years "new" tech stacks kept popping up all over the place but now some level of stabilization seems emerge, i.e. more and more people relearn the virtues of "old style" programming with focus on stability and performance.

[@codecaine]

I loved the later 90s and early 2000s where I had to make almost everything from scratch. These days there are packages for most things.

[@colin_actually]

I'm learning Zig and I feel a little bit reinvigorated.

[@jgoodman75]

Its fun for me. I don't do the scrum bullshit though.

[@RiversJ]

My job is 70% coding and 30% designing and planning how to do it optimally, i don't just default to a library i evaluate whether the library or custom code is better for the usecase. And a good portion is learning how to do it in better ways. Even difficult problems become boring over time, if you want the challenge and excitement, realize that comes almost entirely out of growing and challenging your existing mental model. TL;DR; If you don't want to learn new stuff, don't wonder why the existing crap became boring.

[@stevo-dx5rr]

I’ve been in industry for 15 years and coding in my domain has evolved into meta programming the cloud, the nuts and bolts of which I find to be boilerplatey, unmemorable, and frustrating. The design work is fun though.

[@JohanMynhardt]

Definitely experienced this. The only time I am really happy is when I don't touch hyped "mainstream" languages. With mainstream it's like things change too often, and just as you're used to something, there's some new bandwagon passing by. Then add the fact that there's never time scheduled for maintenance... that's fun after a while 😢

[@go_better]

This. And not only mainstream languages. But mainstream industries - like SaaS fintech. Instead of not-so-popular-maybe embedded programming, electronics. Or mainstream companies - Faang or Faang-wannabes. Instead of smaller companies or startups. Do you find also that relatable?

[@cSharpIndonesia]

Hey, nice content! Greetings from a programmer from Indonesia!

[@RememberingGames]

25 years in, still feels like I'm living my best life. 🎉

[@HealthyDev]

It's important to celebrate the good things!! Congrats 🎉

[@larsfaye292]

Same here!

[@michaelmemory6938]

Having a job that essentially forces you to spend your free time learning new tech than enjoying your life. I was gaslit so much in my old job that if I wasn't spending my weekends coding, and loving / engaging with it constantly, I wasn't up to snuff and I wouldn't meet performance management continuing that train. Honestly has made me question my entire degree and choice of career.

[@zuhryfayesz-me6uy]

Very well said. I pursue coding to challange me and validate my possibility to build something that can achieve my desired outcome. nothing else.

[@darthnick77]

The real problem for me is that I like coding but don't like managing the stuff around it. Even tough sometimes there is a great library that can do everything I need for free, I prefer to code it myself because that's where all the fun is. Now this is fine for personal or hobby projects, but it's harder to explain at work because the only thing that matters to the company is money. So as a professional developer I often end up only managing already written libraries and trying to fix bugs that we have virtually no control over.

[@michaelalls8230]

One thing that has made coding not as exciting as it was is because I’ve found other thing that I enjoy more. As a lead I’ve found that I enjoy helping my team. Reminds me of a post I read about a dev who by the metrics should have been fired but what he was doing made the team better in every way.

[@HealthyDev]

Great insight. I often found it hard to justify my efforts in lead positions for some of the things I needed to do too. It seems the easier something is to measure, the more people put value on it. Which is a bummer, that's not a good reason to measure.

[@kainx99]

For me, the act of coding is still awesome, will continue to code until the day I die. However, business tend to view me as a necessary evil. To them, I am little more than a feature factory, a translator of english to *insert programming language here*. To me that is a poor business plan: - Hire experts - Pay them a bunch of money - Downplay their expertise - Tell them to shut up

[@sadboisibit]

I started to notice something similar when I was in the 4th or 5th year of my career. I couldn't figure out why the products I built at my day job sucked compared to the toy projects I built in the evenings/weekends. I didn't really put any more or less effort into either. Eventually, I realized that every job I'd had was missing 'vision'. No one in management really knew what the product was, who the users were, or where we should go in the future. They think they can substitute 'vision' with canned processes like scrum. They know that they should hire expensive experienced developers and designers but then they don't know how to utilize them. It's always garbage ideas in, garbage products out.

[@majorhumbert676]

​@@sadboisibitgreat post. Every company I've worked for states that they "only hire the best developers". But I've interviewed many great candidates who will turn down our offers because we pay perhaps 30% too little. So clearly, saving some money in the short term takes priority over talent. In a similar way, management will impose new features that don't fit well with the rest of the product. It will not gain adoption by clients, and yet much worse: it will make the product an unmaintainable mess. I think one problem can be that management tend to view themselves as domain experts. Because they can't understand the tech, they must be good at something, which must be the business domain. Other managers aren't even good at that, so they will pride themselves of being good managers. If you're given power, I think it's easy to become full of yourself. You will gain some confidence boost when you're recognised by superiors, and you get self defensive when you feel that you're not the biggest expert in the room.

[@HealthyDev]

@@sadboisibityou sound like someone that may potentially want to go more entrepreneurial at some point. When vision missing bothers people, they usually have it inherently themselves...

[@simonegiuliani4913]

devops nonsense + scrum + javascript frameworks killed all the fun IMHO.

[@akauppi2]

To me, it‘s been a question about whether I‘m interested in the _solution_ or coding itself. Changed to mechanical engineering. Want to solve things and see progress on a weekly basis.

[@HealthyDev]

Very insightful. That there I believe is one of the differences between hobbyists trying to be make money in the field, vs people who chose this as a profession. There's nothing wrong with entering the field either way, we all have our own path. But I do see people progress much further, and find more fulfillment in their career, when they accept that much of the process of coding is fuel for a growing business at the end of the day.

[@JustinK0]

i graduated and havent even been able to get into the industry, and have no real guidance on how to continue to improve, or what to get into.

[@kukulis100]

you are playing sad melodies ;) Thanks for the video.

[@leoyt6198]

I’ve been working as a developer for almost 4 years and I’ve been unmotivated for a while… The first two companies I worked at were really amateur when it comes to management and mentoring, so I think I already started with the wrong foot, but at least I had the opportunity to use many different technologies. I started struggling a lot with the bad practices at these companies so I started studying by myself to improve my skills and apply the good practices whenever I could. Then I started working at my current company and things got a little bit better but the problem is that it really depends on the project because each project has a different client and a different team and I also wasn’t so lucky again. All these companies were service-based and maybe I wouldn’t feel this way working at a product-based one. Idk, maybe I’m being a little bit petty but I’m really feeling unmotivated regarding the software development role and I’m now wanting to pursue a career as a solutions architect at aws, for some reason it seems to be a nicer job.

[@HealthyDev]

Hey there. I've worked for many different companies, and if your experience so far has only been service based, that is definitely an option to try (product based). Not saying it would solve all your problems, but some people really don't do well in service based or product based companies depending on how they like to work. Both have their tradeoffs of course.

[@leoyt6198]

@@HealthyDev Hey, thanks for the reply! Yeah, I might be wrong but I think I could do well in a product based company because I’m done learning new languages and frameworks that does the same thing as the ones I already know (even though I adapt pretty fast, I just want to specialize now) and I think I’d have a stronger feeling of ownership over the product, so I think it’d be easier to climb up the ladder. I’m thinking about trying to land a job on a product based company while also (long term) preparing myself to land an associate solutions architect job at aws. Just a suggestion, I think it could be interesting to have a video about the different types of company here

[@HealthyDev]

@@leoyt6198great suggestion! Thank you.

[@dinesee1984]

I need help with numbers 2 and 3! Everyday while coding I feel like this is „too easy”, „too narrow”, „not makes big impact”, „I view project/things from bigger picture and programming is only part of business” and eventually „this is boring”. I see coding as part of problem solving and part of making money for company’s shareholders. And I don’t know how to deal with this and how to move forward, maybe I should move to management? And also number 3 also kicks in… I can’t figure out industry in which coding would be interesting (I am frontend dev).

[@HealthyDev]

If you see the benefit of code as more than just building features, that it contributes to the company's bottom line, that's a really GOOD thing. You would probably excel at a lot of tech roles, both more senior programming ones, or possibly focused on the product itself more. Some developers shift into product management and find a better fit there too.

[@dinesee1984]

@@HealthyDev Thank you, I will try to research it.

[@HealthyDev]

@@dinesee1984definitely consider checking out TechRolepedia. I’m launching a course in January that goes even deeper than it to help with career awareness and role choices.

[@dinesee1984]

@@HealthyDev I will because I am feeling stuck between 2 magnets right now, kinda lucky to have subjectively easy job and also kinda bored because I am not using my full potential.

[@HealthyDev]

Understandable. I talked about that in the video "Why Are Programmers Never Happy With Their Job?": kzbin.info/www/bejne/oZrLc3imeqmGd6c There are times to grow, and times to chill. Life happens, sometimes you can't grow for very real reasons.

[@jerryhall5709]

I'm not as passionate about it anymore but it's not exactly boring either. Coding can still be fun from time to time. But of course not like in the days when you built your own sites and interacted with people all over internet. Those creative days are gone.

[@privatepenguinmadagascar]

I was around 7 years of coding, but suddenly i feel really it isn't fun anymore. My career feel stuck at the point for questioning my own skill.

[@HealthyDev]

Hey there, it's not just you! It's pretty common to get the "7 year itch". And also, I personally feel like I'm grasping to get a hold on on every project I start at first - even after 26 years! Meaning I know some things, but there are always things I run into that I've never seen, and it takes me a while to come up to full speed. Here's a couple videos that may help you if you're questioning your skill. You may have seen them already, if not hopefully this helps someone reading this. Is There Really Such Thing As a GOOD Programmer? kzbin.info/www/bejne/d6mXdpmPbrGlfJY Can Imposter Syndrome Help Software Developers Grow? kzbin.info/www/bejne/apS2hoyGi9mqgZo

[@InfernalStateMachine]

that's absolutely normal my friend, it happens to many people. When you start your career in coding, you are excited about all the skills you pick up, the things you achieve, and you are in a position where you are not expected to be perfect; after all you're just started. It's when you get some experience, you understand the standards when you get to understand what you don't know and what you can't do, when you meet the first dev who's as good as you but with less experience, that's how you end up questioning things

[@Expateer]

Great video, but I don't agree with #3 only because cool industry doesn't correlate to fun at work. One of my coolest projects was at an automobile disposal company.

[@HealthyDev]

Hey there, what I meant by that point was to consider a boring industry (to you) as a source of not feeling like coding is fun anymore. I've worked on projects where the business was not glamorous at all, but the technology challenges were really interesting. Sometimes that was enough to enjoy it, sometimes not. Maybe I was too absolutist with my point? The main point I was trying to make is if you feel the product you're working on doesn't contribute much to the world, and the business domain is boring, the technology being cool may not be enough to keep you feeling like you're having fun coding. It's a grey area to be sure, I appreciate you sharing your opinion.

[@scvnthorpe__]

For me it gets boring when I know I've gotta do something big for my portfolio to kinda showcase what I'm into these days but it's also daunting getting together the design, testing etc. when my real hobby interests are silly things like just visualising some data and telling a story about what that probably represents.

[@HealthyDev]

You may already know this, but data visualization and data storytelling are specific skills, and they are really valuable in the data analytics and machine learning spaces - as well as just business in general. If that's something you really love to do, you could position yourself as an expert in that specifically. There are some great books out there about it.

[@K_James95]

Over the past 1yr I have experienced disinterest in coding. Some people tell me I can make a good preacher, others I can make a good fitness coach.

[@artemodintsov8675]

For me I guess it's a sum of different factors. It feels like it lost the whole purpose. On one hand it's a very poor management and the decision that are made. On the other hand since I've moved to this whole ML/Data Science/Data Engineering area I haven't done any projects that are meaningful. Most of them were put on the shelf and the rest had almost no customer and no purpose. Now I get even more afraid about working in this area even though there are so many great projects.

[@MaximusAbrams]

love your content, just a word of advice (take with a grain of salt) but something is off with your microphone configuration. it captures your voice in a bit wavy/shaky way some moment. I think more on the high parts, rather than the lows. but full disclosure, I am no audio expert.

[@theoceanman8687]

I am considering of switching careers from corporate software developer for an abstracted enterprise system to game development. Everything these days is heavily abstracted.

[@chaoscarl8414]

For me, it's a combination of many things. Toxic work environment is a big one. And it's affected most of the companies I've worked for. And I'm not just talking an evil overlord boss or bad management in general... It's also about the way you work. Never enough time for proper testing. Often releasing software with known bugs. Sometimes even being told to lie to the customer. If you want to have any kind of pride in your work, that kind of work ethic (or rather, the lack of it) can be really soul crushing. This is made worse by the inability to influence the management. In most cases you can't make them listen. And when they finally do listen it's because the brown stuff has hit the fan and the company is in trouble. And who's getting fired, now that the company is in trouble? It's certainly not the guys at the top who made all the bad decisions... As for challenging yourself... Honestly, I've gotten to the point where I'm tired of having to do that. Being a mediocre programmer in a gig-economy means often changing jobs. And every time that happens I have to spend months asking questions, taking notes, writing tutorials for myself, and basically work my behind off to learn a new setup. So yeah... I'd say the tech stack is getting much too complex, especially when working with web-programming. The sheer amount of languages interacting in strange ways to make a modern webpage is just mindboggling. And yes, I do find the industry incredibly boring. Mostly because of all the factors above. I'm just a code-monkey hammering away at my keyboard. I spend years getting through university, yet no one listens to me. I have no agency. I have no motivation. I know I'm likely going to get fired within a year or two anyway, so why bother with doing my best? It's not like it's going to get appreciated anyway... And in any case, my best is probably not that good, because I now find myself working with a new setup - again! New languages to learn... New procedures to remember... Tons of old code with not a single comment to review and understand... And certainly no documentation...

[@HealthyDev]

How about finding a market with a problem that can be solved by a fairly simple software solution, and building a product? You would need a co-founder to do the business side of things. Or you could spend the next year maybe learning about product management and digital marketing. I know this is out of left field, you sound like coding in the corporate environment is probably not going to ever satisfy at the stage you're at. Just a thought.

[@chaoscarl8414]

@@HealthyDev Thank you for your reply. I've thought about it. And it might be the way forward. But doing the needed research and development might take years. And I still need to live, so it would be years effectively working two jobs with no promise of success at the end of it. I've talked with some of my friends and old colleagues about it. The reply has generally been "naaah, that's going to involve coding...". I don't know... Maybe we're just in the wrong field of work. But I do find it interesting that of those I've kept in touch with since university, most have moved away from programming. Not necessarily because they wanted to climb the corporate ladder (though that could certainly also be part of it), but because they wanted to get away from coding in general, by any means necessary. Some went into management. Others burned out completely and will likely never return to IT. If you ask me, there's something very very wrong with the tech-industry right now. So many people burning out... It just shouldn't happen.

[@HealthyDev]

@@chaoscarl8414 definitely. I'm going to be trying to help professionals in tech this year hopefully widen their skills a bit to start moving more in the direction of possibly working for themselves.

[@82vojtech]

Do you know Pointfree? Those guys are brilliant, we use their composable architecture, but, I am no longer capable of building apps with that. Every time somebody adds a new layer of abstraction to make something simpler, it adds some new type of complexity, so in the end its magnificent, but nobody can fix a bug...

[@gorfimus]

We're going to get a Jayme Edwards Advent of Code livestream though right? To prove coding is still fun!

[@HealthyDev]

Haha! Learning a new language this winter isn't really on my radar. But I will be livestreaming on KZbin this month for free career coaching once a week. I did it three times on Instagram, but I believe I've figured out a way to do it here with OBS and Zoom. Stay tuned!

[@alexanderdederer8250]

I'm in developing for about 20 years. And i need to say try Rust is your thinking you are tired to be Developer. It's mind blowing language give you a lot more fun challenge.

[@cjevil84]

Also the increasing responsibility and "shift left" mentality pushed to devs constantly makes us burned out (...scrum, devops, company politics, etc.). The roles I have to assume today were full job titles 15 years ago. But there is still just 24 hours in a day. I am forced to let some things go which are usually those that are the fun and motivating things. How did we as industry ending up asking a fresh junior's estimate and putting it in spreadsheets to determine ROI, TCO, etc. ?! Heck in some places I worked in even those metrics are missing, there is just a demand for all the niceties of agility, and none of the costs.

[@carlhandy]

I’m on my 8th year and thinking about quitting. Programming is not biggest skill though, I’m better at architecture design and planning.

[@HealthyDev]

Listen to your heart on that one...if your current gig doesn't offer opportunities for growth there, maybe start hitting the LinkedIn profile for a makeover and have some conversations with companies about their architecture needs?

[@SuperMacGuy]

I will admit, I am burned out, I had a really crappy boss, I believed in what the company was doing, but there wasn’t much creativity anymore, and so now I’m out. I am looking to go back to a career path / industry that I had done before I started coding full-time.

[@HealthyDev]

How long have you been coding? I only ask because if you found a gig with a better work environment, maybe you'd still enjoy it? No idea what you were doing before coding, so only you know the best move to make there.

[@RogerGoll]

Many people graduate every day, and technologies and tools, despite being beneficial, along with the vast amount of labor currently available, push down the price of our work, albeit gradually. Forced obsolescence, high dependence on frameworks and code that you didn't create, leading to dependency and obsolescence. Standards and terms created to gourmetize or turn previously simple things into rituals and useless metrics. The gradual industrialization of the profession, all of this, at least for me, certainly takes away the pleasure of working in an activity. I'm not against AI, nor do I think it's correct to regulate it, but I believe that our profession is gradually going to change.

[@HealthyDev]

For sure. Our profession has always been changing.

[@fredskronk]

Guess it’s kinda’ dangerous to post a comment like this in case it’s found. But what the heck. I got quite excited when I saw this video but, i stopped watching as soon as you came to “not challenging yourself”. But since you posted it again I thought that I might just give it another shot. Still disappointed, though. The one thing I think you missed is how everything is the same. I love some of my projects! I have had the fortune to work on some truly interesting and important things over the years. But, having said that. There is nothing changing the simple fact that everything is just “store some stuff in a database and read it back later”. It doesn’t matter how interesting the data is, or how cool the tech might be; in the end the data is processed, stored and then displayed. Like. Been there, done that and I’ve got the conference t-shirts. How do I get out of this feeling? I work for a great company with an awesome work life balance, I have an interesting project where my expertise is truly used and I get to learn new stuff. So, what should I do?

[@soundpalette2438]

Tech stacks blow.

[@asagiai4965]

Programming for me is fun and still is. What's not fun are; Other programmer's whim. Your management or supervisor. Other people's whim. Deadlines. Nonsense tech culture. And anyone who is making your programming life worst.

[@simoroshka]

to be honest, it was never fun for me. I am doing it because I have no other way to make the living. I'm an immigrant which also makes it harder to find other options. Over the past 7 years of working I changed 3 jobs, landed a company with a nice culture and people (can't day the same about the project), became a senior, had a side passion project for a while... all while burning out every couple of years and still continuing pushing because I have no other option. Should I try finding some other thing to do, other than coding? Start a KZbin channel? I don't believe I can make money with anything but maybe life would have more meaning at least.

[@HealthyDev]

In part of your story, your career sounds like it's going good. But there's the part about burnout. Can you expand on why that happens? It seems like finding something else to do, after you've shown some success with software, may not be the solution unless you can get to the root of that burnout.

[@RasWouto]

Hard job i find. My brain explodes at my own created mess haha

[@DuRoehre90210]

That really depends on the industry. In the real software driven companies the SW engineers are more or less among similarly minded people. Where I am is some other industry which would like to see itself as "software-driven" (because "hype") but is inept to understand the prerequisites for the culture where good SW companies thrive. And I am sick of being "a developer" (i.e. coder) but on the same time fixing up design shortcomings and mistakes (because the dumb architects are more caring about their titles and nice powerpoint presentations rather than making clean designs which help other engineers), and maintaining the infrastructure (because the stupid IT subcontractors are only caring about the obligations handed over to them by the management and not about the actual demands of the engineers), and stupid (literally) engineers from another internal silo, somewhere up in the delivery chain, which cannot even understand basic CS things but they keep impressing the management with "high-level talks" about "best patterns" and "scalable code" and "the cloud to rule them all" ... while YOU have the daily struggle with the delivery problems caused by their overkill architecture (which might be scalable for enterprises 10x the size of ours ... but ATM that is simply causing TONNES of overhead to roll out basic requirements changes, like they need weeks or months for simplest API changes). And I can feel myself becoming more and more bitter every year. Maybe it's really about time to look for alternatives. But, unfortunately, the current position is kinda local maximum (career-wise) and it's hard to get to another local maximum anytime soon. That's not a big problem when you are in your twenties or early 30ies but things start looking different later.

[@HealthyDev]

You just called 4 separate groups of people stupid. If that isn't a sign it's probably time to look elsewhere (or look within), I don't know what is. Sorry you're struggling so much, I can definitely feel for you with what you're sharing. At some point though, it's up to you how much you're willing to put up with. Those 4 groups of people are unlikely to all change, at least not to the point that suddenly that job will be fun again.

[@DuRoehre90210]

@@HealthyDev You are probably right. My respect for the company, our staff and mgmt. decisions has been degrading for a while now, which might also contribute to my biased perception. Maybe it's time to change horses.

[@HealthyDev]

@@DuRoehre90210I'm definitely not trying to tell you what to do. It's a tough decision, and only you know what's best. I'm just reflecting back a few things I saw in your response. Best of luck with whatever you end up doing!

[@DuRoehre90210]

@@HealthyDev No worries, I might sound bitter and resentful but I am not that far down in the rabbit hole to not understand that I should not blame $stuff on the society, on the world, or on random YT creators. Thank you for the contents, this probably brings the one or other SW dev in trouble to the right path.

[@Jankoekepannekoek]

Personal take: It's because most of coding is CRUD, and CRUD isn't mentally challenging.

[@esparda07]

Anybody ever told you that you look like Chris O'Dowd?

[@shawnmercado2219]

Programming isn't fun because no one will pay me to do it anymore.

[@idontcarefuku]

Noice ❤

[@ThatGuyDownInThe]

it was never fun I'm just trynna be rich LMAO

[@HealthyDev]

There are a lot easier ways to get rich than being a programmer! They sure do a good job convincing us otherwise though. I call it the "Technology Training Industrial Complex". A well-oiled machine convincing everyone that writing code is the fast track to fame and fortune. For a select few that's true. For the vast majority, it's not.

[@mdguitar00]

What are some of the easier ways?

[@AntonioPetrelli]

​@@mdguitar00politics, or become a thief. Mostly the same...

[@ThatGuyDownInThe]

@@HealthyDev I mean I've had contracts making 35$ an hour so coming from poverty this just isn't so to me. but YES theres the flip side of them making this seem sexy when it's REAL hard work. I've decided to start my own company to get on the other side of things after being shafted a few times. I have cried my eyes out in the fetal position many times LOL

[@ThatGuyDownInThe]

@@AntonioPetrelli exactly lol, where else could I make 35$ an hour and thats a START after a couple years teaching myself. Beats running vending machines like the old days lmao

[@timstevens3361]

what are you doing that matters thats new thats cool that your proud of nothing

[@HealthyDev]

I guess it depends on where you're at in your career. For me, I ask each day what am I doing that helps people. Sometimes that's not new or cool. But there's nothing wrong with your list either. We all want different things at different times :)

[@timstevens3361]

i get ideas freqly wish i had more time been working on one idea for last 3 yrs was cool once now AI can kinda do it. tryin to build something that plays/records/displays ideas. had idea for a game. had idea for a book juicer that dont use neural nets or nltk shit. for me the idea is everything !@@HealthyDev

[@HealthyDev]

@@timstevens3361if you haven’t heard of him already, consider looking into Dane Maxwell.

[@CalvinIrby01]

It's dying that's why. And who knows what GPT and Bard can do at this point. Why waste our time?

[@HealthyDev]

You could use Chat GPT and Bard and find out? I have a Chat GPT subscription and use it all the time. It's not dying, how we do it is just shifting.

[@plaidchuck]

If youre burnt out then quit and retire to make some room for us that want to work

[@HealthyDev]

You obviously have no idea what burnout means. It has nothing to do with wanting to work or not. It has to do with being overworked.

[@hardkorebhaktaofbob]

How about we start paying programmers 50K a year only? Maybe then we could sort this out. Do you know what happens to people when they make an excess amount of money?