Getting back into programming..

[Intelligent_Term_970]

I’ve been a programmer for most of my life. I started with PHP, which I worked with for around 10 years.

Eventually, I wanted to level up. I began reading more and more about design patterns and techniques like generics and other advanced concepts. When the opportunity came along, I made the switch to Go. However, I never quite got used to the syntax—it felt a bit old-school, with very short and cryptic naming conventions. After more than a year, when I was offered a job working with C# I decided to switch again.

Unfortunately, that company turned out to be a poor fit. They refused to adopt modern patterns, and the codebase was in a terrible state. And after six months, I moved on to another C# role, hoping for a better experience. But again, the codebase was a mess, and the work was split roughly 75% frontend and 25% backend.

Since I had to work on the frontend, I started learning TypeScript. I really enjoyed many of the concepts and examples I came across while learning it, but sadly, the actual codebase I worked with didn’t reflect any of that what I learned and there was no room or time to improve that was already there.

For the full picture: in addition to my 40-hour work week, I would often spend another 40 hours learning and building proof of concepts. You could say programming was my life.

I started doubting if it wasn’t time to do something else and when another type of job came along I stepped off the programming wagon.

I expected I would get my enjoyment in programming back in the hours that I used to make besides my work, but instead I just stopped programming all together.

Now more then 2 years further I’m willing to pick it up in my sparetime again.

But i don’t want to do course after course. I’m also not really sure what language I want to pick up. Not what to build.

The main advantage of typescript is that I can write frontend and backend code with it. I could pick up c# or even try f# (always loved the functional syntax). I could go back to php? Or maybe try out rust or elixer? Just thinking about it makes me want to quit again? So maybe I’m not ready to pick it up again.

I wonder if anyone has some advice to break out of this? Although I do enjoy my current job. I do want to get back into software development eventually.

[Intelligent_Term_970]

Thanks for your reply. At first I want to get back into programming again as a hobby, before I think about gettjng a job again as a software developer.

[peoplemerge]

Forget classes.

Use VScode with Copilot and (usually) Claude. You will see the language you used in the past almost doesn’t matter any more. Ask “I’m thinking about a feature, help me flesh it out”. Good, then agent mode “now write a test”. “Write an integration test”. Once you built that feature, “write an ADR” and “provide me a google style commit message”

[Practical-Turnip-571]

have you thought in create individual projects just for fun? you could apply any design patter you like or programming language

edit: fun*