Ask HN: Did you assume you would love CS because you loved hobby programming? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Did you assume you would love CS because you loved hobby programming?

13 pointsamichail10 comments

And if so, did your assumption turn out to be correct?

No, from a young age I just appreciated computers and machines and logic.

Tbh I don’t love programming. It’s just the best way to make my wage-slave status work best for me. Remote work, chill colleagues, relatively interesting (tho boring) day work

I knew it wouldn’t be as fun as hobby programming bc you have metrics and a boss. But such is the life of the wage-slave

> Tbh I don’t love programming. It’s just the best way to make my wage-slave status work best for me. Remote work, chill colleagues, relatively interesting (tho boring) day work

It's interesting. You aren't wrong. It's just weird to think that a lot of people are in your similar situation (me too), and we just have this "cap" about us. Why aren't we out there pushing to be entrepreneurs or demanding more out of life than whatever salary we're given/"earning"? Why are we not more risk takers, why are we complacent? Are we actually happy? Is this what we dreamed of as a child in terms of risk/reward/stability/day to day grind?

Is life really exciting/"worth living" to the fullest if every day we're just spending time on a PC/phone, checking Teams/Slack/emails. Can be pinged for a production incident or a requirements change at any time. Always kind of "plugged in", having to plan your day if you want to be effective in your off time mentally ("I'll work on XYZ task tomorrow, try to wrap XYZ up, try to follow up with XYZ"). It's like there's always multiple deadlines we are behind on with clients, always bugs, things to fix, sacrifices/compromises to make.

I wonder how many people just stick it out for the paycheck (like you said) and actually "dread" it. Like, what alternatives do we have? It's the lesser evil.

To be an entrepreneur you have to do a lot of other stuff (like finding clients) that many technical people are neither interested in nor would be good at. That's certainly my case. I'd much rather have someone else handle all that and let me worry about the techincal stuff. If it worked out I could likely make more money as a consultant but I don't think I'd be happier and would certainly be more stressed.

I probably couldn't stand a boss who tried to tell me how to do my job though but I've never had the misfortune to be in that situation.

Being an entrepreneur is easy if you have the money to burn, and are in a life phase where you have no one dependent on you so that a failed venture wouldn’t put others at risk.

*edit: Oh, and if you have good mental health.

Do you ask these same questions of all the biologists, chemists, engineers of whatever the hell when all they do is work a regular job?

Kind of the opposite... I enjoyed hobby programming in high school, but my only experience with it as a career was seeing what my dad did as a programmer in a large company. Too many meetings and architecture review boards for my taste, so I was looking for something else in college. Then I discovered what it's like building tools for researchers and realized I could enjoy programming for a living, and that it all depends on the team size (small!) and the context.

Yes, sort of. Having programmed since I was ten years old as a hobby, having taught myself a couple versions of BASIC, some Z-80 assembly, some 6510 assembly, and some Pascal, I went to college planning to be a Computer Science major.

I quickly discovered that I was really ill-prepared in math. I took geometry and Algebra 1 and 2 in high school, with some pretty awful teachers. My school didn't offer AP classes. I had taken about everything my high school had to offer including chemistry and physics, but I failed the math placement exam and was in classes with 17-year-olds who had 3 semesters of AP calculus or IB classes. So, I had to take remedial algebra and an elementary functions class before I got to Calculus 111. That class was heavily oriented towards math majors (prove everything). Some of my fellow CS students realized this and started taking math requirements over the summer at other schools that taught them a little easier. A CS major would have required more calculus, discrete math, abstract algebra, linear algebra and probably some other classes that I have forgotten; it was basically a math major + programming.

So, I had to make a shift - I decided to major in English (my other love) and take a Computer Science minor. I took every programming class my schedule allowed (operating systems, assembly language, 2 semesters of Pascal+data structures, a programming languages class, an algorithms class, audited a computer architecture class) and taught myself C and Macintosh GUI programming on the side, and started developing HyperCard XMDs and XFCNs and working on instructional multimedia for faculty. I've worked as a software developer/engineer more or less since graduation in 1989 with a B.A. degree, doing all kinds of programming, including >20 years spent specializing in embedded and DSP programming (yes, of course I use math constantly, mostly algebra, but some calculus concepts such as PID and digital filters, a practical rather than whiteboard approach), but with an English degree, just teaching myself as much as I could on the side, and I never went back to school.

So, I kind of love Computer Science, I definitely love programming, I definitely love math despite still being relatively bad at it, but I really don't like academia.

Fortunately, my college had just created a Computer Engineering major which was all about architecture, languages, databases etc. No math in sight, not any more than High School had prepared me for.

I would like to clarify. I don't massively enjoy computer _science_. I did study mathematics at uni, but I enjoy practical computation to theory and academics.

That being said, I still love programming, both professional and hobby. I still do hobby programming on the side next to my professional programming

Yes on both, but I underestimated the hellish, destructive nature of modern organizations and workplaces.

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