Do you / commenters here really “enjoy” programming as a career as much as when they first had enough skill and enthusiasm to build things?
I think this is a big misconception among devs with less than five years of exp.
I think this is a big misconception among devs with less than five years of exp.
Now at 35, I definitely think it's time to move on. I won't lie about my lack of interest in the field. The problems are less difficult to solve, but also much more frustrating. A lot more black boxes that you can't reverse engineer when you get stuck. Working with other people in a big company means things move far slower than my ability to get things done.
Plus the proliferation of different tech stacks means that despite the big job market, most of the new jobs require specific knowledge that I don't have, and my existing experience with low level coding and problem solving don't carry much weight.
None of those jobs _require_ specific knowledge upfront. The problem is clueless fuckwits in HR filtering out CVs based on keywords. General problem solving ability and knowledge of fundamentals means you can actually learn any of the latest shitty frameworks in a few hours on the job.
The part about black boxes you get stuck on strongly resonates with me. Programming can be a lot of fun, when you can rely on your own, or well documented programming.
But enter the world of development in big companies where everything specification never leaves alpha phase, is done in retrospect, only on request, 3 month later then needed and if missing half of the absolutely needed information is the best case, it's just so miserable.
I got bored with “programming” about 4 years ago and I belatedly discovered “the cloud” and started moving into more architectural roles I enjoy being able to do the full stack [1] and jump back and forth between the different parts without having to worry about either the infrastructure gatekeepers[2] or having to wait for resources. Any resource I need is just a yaml file or script away.
I also enjoy the force multiplier affect of being able to lead projects.
[1] full stack: front end, middleware, databases, CI/CD, CloudFormation templates, network configuration, etc.
[2] yes at a larger company I would expect to have access to a Dev account to play around with and get my infrastructure as code templates approved.
Web technologies were fun when I started back in the late 90s early 2000s. Learn the basics, build a server from scratch, throw a few languages and frameworks under your belt, and you were good to go. Of course, you can still build things simply, but good luck getting hired without the latest arcane tech stack in your resume (that will no doubt be forgotten in a few years). In addition, web development skills have become a worldwide commodity.
I am done with the web.
Then one thing led to another and I got a job more on the pure software side of things, and realized as long as there is some interesting problem to solve it's really not so bad what the end application is.
I find a lot of these comments are depressing. I feel like no matter how complicated the stack becomes, computers are made by humans and therefore can be understood by other humans. I always pity people working in medicine who have to debug what seems like a proof-of-concept that has been endlessly patched by evolution for the past few million years into a working product.
But hey, I only have 5-ish years experience working full time as an engineer so I guess I'm still a baby. I wonder how I'll feel about all this 15 years down the road.
One thing I think a lot of us forget is how _lucky_ we are to be working on interesting projects/tech. I started my career as a maintenance coder and if I had continued doing that, I never would have lasted this long...
And yes, though not as often as I used to, I still have times when I have to scratch a particular itch for 24 hours straight or I have to jump out of the shower to test something that just popped in my head :-)
No, a woodworker builds furniture, a developer develops applications.
It helps to think of pure programmers as assemblymen working on a factory floor, nothing more nothing less.
Depends on your stack. Things just kept getting better for me. I was using it before and after the peak and it is still much larger than it initially was.
But hate