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Comment by Aaronmacaron | Hacker News Reader

Whenever I see someone like this on HN – someone whose motivation is to build a large company and make a lot of money, someone who is an "idea guy," someone for whom programming is merely a means to an end – I'm glad I'm not like this. I'm grateful that programming itself is genuinely fun to me, that I don't mind whether what I'm coding is useful or ends up generating money. I'm glad I program because I enjoy it, not because I convinced myself to do it, hoping it would advance my career.

At the same time, it saddens me that the thing I love so much becomes a source of frustration for many others.

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From the article,

>As frustrating as coding can be, I am still in love with it. I love to see my code work, I love it when people can use it, play with it. I love building things, solving problems. I love making progress through difficult challenges.

The "idea guy" part of the story was from the writer's past.

I enjoy coding, too. But since there are so many fun things to code, I choose among the fun things things that are useful to others as well as myself.

> I'm grateful that programming itself is genuinely fun to me

> I don't mind whether what I'm coding is useful or ends up generating money

you can have it both ways; i'm happy that I enjoy it _and_ i'm happy it's useful to others :)

> I don't mind whether what I'm coding is useful or ends up generating money

This is a problem most commonly seen in junior developers. It leads to them making poor decisions that are not aligned with business goals.

> I'm glad I program because I enjoy it

Spend enough time working in the industry and that will go away.

For your mental health's sake, I hope you find a hobby that is unrelated to your job. What you are describing is a very common path to burnout. Been there, seen many classmates go through it as well.

Dunno dude, I’ve been in the industry for almost 3 decades, programming for almost 40 years, and I still enjoy it a lot.

I've been programming for closing in on 40 years. I got lucky when I was 32 with a position that let me get out of the industry, stay home and raise my daughter while slowly building a libre software project that has been ongoing for almost 24 years, and making a living from that for the last 14 years.

An important reason things have worked out as they have is because I continue to enjoy coding and I don't allow what I work on to be controlled by "business goals".

While your somewhat cynical take may reflect the experience of an overwhelming majority of the people who write software today, it isn't a description of the only pathway along a life as a programmer.

I haven't burned out yet, and have been writing code for nearly 50 years.

58, been programming since 13. Still enjoy it. Still both a hobby and a job

I think programmers are like writers.

Those who are good at it and love it don't simply retire. They just decrease their hours and continue their craft for as long as they have the health and energy. It probably leads to more healthy years to have something like this.

I got burnout from weeks of doing nothing during the pandemic. Think about it. What exactly do you put in your timesheet when you haven't written a single line of code or email or responded to a ticket?

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