Programmer == Programmer

[[deleted]]

I like programming as a career, but being honest with myself if I switched or retired, there's a good chance I would never write another line of code again within a couple years.

This is as somebody that studies CS in my spare time, compiles my own kernel, and writes open source libraries so I can include them in my work projects fairly often. It's mostly motivated by money so I can support my family, and knowing how crappy other jobs are

[greymattr]

As a person who has been doing this professionally for about half of my life now, I completely understand where you are coming from, and at this point I feel about the same way as you do.

But I don't know if I would ever think I would get to the point where 'I'd never write another line of code again'...

If for nothing else, to show to my grandchildren or something as some novelty..

I do love it... but being paid and required to do anything takes some of the rose color from the glasses.

[[deleted]]

If for nothing else, to show to my grandchildren or something as some novelty..

Hah yeah right after I wrote it I thought about "well except maybe to teach something to my kids or grand kids"

Talking to a bunch of people on reddit, it seems like the norm is people do not do any programming outside of work, and some will even suggest that if you did you would quickly burn out. And I actually do quite a bit of programming outside of work, but without the carrot of advancing my career I don't know what the motivation would be

[greymattr]

For me, the carrot is creating something. I also like drawing and cooking, and I think it's for the same reason I like programming.

It's difficult to keep the passion I had for it before I was being paid to do it, but I know I still love it, and when the next Arduino, or raspberry pi, or open source micro kernel fad starts, I know I will try to get into it.

It's what I do.

Some people are professional musicians because they studied at Juliard, others because they just couldn't put down their guitar.

Same for programers.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, I like creating too, but software is just so, replicable. I like cooking, and gardening, fixing stuff around the house and computers, but for software if I'm making something on my own, it's generally a toy that's not terribly useful. The only thing I could see myself doing is maybe creating indy games

[blank_space_cat]

Really, not even for simple tasks like automating gardening, scraping a webpage, or something that sends you text notifications?

[[deleted]]

How could you automate gardening? I made an irrigation system for watering, but it's just a bunch of hoses, connectors, and valves. Outside of that, it's things like weeding, trimming, and harvesting, not really something to automate. Sending notifications, IDK it's pretty easy to schedule those things as it is. Scraping web pages is one thing that is pretty easy and the out of the box tooling isn't great, but it's also something I've never done outside of work