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Comment by cryptica | Hacker News Reader

The software industry messed me up big time. Often, I wish I had chosen a simpler career. It must feel amazing to spend most of your time thinking only about real, simple tangible things.

I imagine that having a simple practical mind as an adult must feel like childhood but I will never know.

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I started my first programming job at 28. Before that I did computer repairs and support. Starting that job was the first time I experienced still thinking about work, outside of work.

In a lot of jobs, your thoughts are free to wonder and you can think about whatever you feel like, whilst also working. Not so in software development, to do a good job your thoughts must only be about the task in hand and those thoughts can persist long after the task is over.

I can relate, and I guess the same holds true for any other knowledge work that requires such intense concentration.

That's an interesting way of thinking of the problem. Personally I have been involved with manual and not so manual effort. Obviously digging a trench ends after you stop, but building an algorithm that does the equivalent thing, whatever that is, is not comparable as you don't stop thinking at 5PM?

There are definitely tradeoffs and I suspect that having chosen software, you might have gotten cabin fever before you were 20 years in.

With software, you can tweak the rules that create a forest and press a button to have - in your hand - a board that’s better than the last: solid, straight, and knot-free.

These are things that take decades in simpler disciplines.

One must ask, “do I need the leverage tech provides to live a well lived life?”

This comment feels out of left field.

Was I accidentally arguing that tech is more important than a well-lived life?

I might have misunderstood your comment. If so, my apologies for the hot take.

How old are you?

I got out of software when I was 27, got back in when I was 30 and then out again at 34. I won't go back.

I drive around the world instead, writing about what I do, and teaching others how they can do it too.[1]

It's never too late. I met people in their 70s driving around Africa, having a great time!

[1] youtube.com/theroadchoseme

I started when I was 10, first paid job when I was 15 or 16, got out in my 30s. I still love coding, and do it every day, but I can't see myself doing it for money again.

I urge you to put your skills to good use at your leisure and for your own pleasure, not as a job, but as an art. You can make the world a better place.

Thank you for sharing your YouTube channel, I find it inspiring.

Thanks! I do still tinker and write code on things I find interesting or challenging.

These days most of my efforts go into photography and writing (I've just finished my second novel). I find working on the "real" world a lot more satisfying than purely digital where not a lot is tangible.

Good luck!

>but I will never know.

Nature, solitude, psilocybin mushrooms, & you'll know.

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