Ask HN: How have some of you gone beyond programming?

So every time I see a cool physical piece of technology on the front page like that ultraleap haptics thing I see I get kind of morose.

I love programming and I've been writing code since I was very young and I love the power it has and the ability to seemingly create something from nothing.

However the things I create don't interact with the physical world or have the same sense of permanence as say a robot or a haptics system. They're effectively ephemeral, relatively speaking.

Has anyone picked up like electrical engineering or mechanical engineering type projects on the side and how did you break out of only programming into that more physical space?