The only reason this whole debate exists is that there are lots of us who love programming, and would be doing lots of it whether or not it paid.
This naturally makes 501 types uneasy, because it leads to unfavorable comparisons.
This naturally makes 501 types uneasy, because it leads to unfavorable comparisons.
But I would guess that a substantial proportion of the current tech workaholics wouldn't be, because they're driven by something other than intrinsic love of technology/computation/programming. Something more like a drive-to-be-on-top type personality, perhaps.
Sometimes having to do something, especially if you can't do it exactly the way you like, can kill feelings for it. Sometimes having to do something for long hours can do the same. I'm not so sure having or lacking these tendencies makes one person better or worse than another.
I'm in my first job, I've been doing this for almost 2 years now. Everything about this place screams "Mediocrity". Most of my coworkers are middle-aged programmers with average skills and no hope of ever becoming anything beyond average. All they want to do is work their 9-5 hours (in all fairness most of them stay until 6), and daydream about the next way to spend their 35day/year vacations (not to mention the ~20 days of public holidays. Yay France!).
I'm not satisfied, a better word would be "fulfilled" at work. I am the youngest of a 50+ programmer team, (not-so-)freshly graduated and I'm regarded as the best dev on the team. Because I love programming, because I don't want to stop learning, because I care.
The only thing that's kept me going for so long is the 2-3 hours of "real" programming I put in every evening. So far my gf's being very comprehensive about that, but I know things will change when kids will come into play. One of the main reasons I read HN is to remind myself that interesting, fulfilling jobs do exist. One day...
I wish it was true; but you are just bullshitting.
http://www.travail-emploi-sante.gouv.fr/informations-pratiqu...
Anecdotally, I find that I program the most in my freetime when I am feeling the most fulfilled at work, which would seem to be the opposite of what you describe. That said, rather than just use myself as an example, I can think of other scenarios where individuals may like to program a lot outside of work:
Some pople enjoy entrepreneurship but also desire and/or require the stability and benefits of working for someone else. In that case, they may use their free time to build products of their own.
Some people enjoy much different levels of "hacking" than what you could find at a single work place. They may be someone who is primarily interested in the work they do, so they are eager to put in 40 hours doing it. But then when they get home, they might like to do something entirely different. Maybe they make mobile productivity apps in Objective-C, but in their free time they like to hack up algorithms for AI opponents for board games in Lisp.
Still others may be in a position at work that while they do program, they also thoroughly enjoy the responsibilities for and time they must dedicate to managing teams or training individuals. Those things, rewarding as they may be, mean that there are just not enough hours in a single work day for the individual to get their fill of programming, so they do it in their free time as well.
And some may just like the social aspect of being active open source contributors. They may program really innovative and cool stuff at work, but the choose to do some more mundane open source stuff in their free time because they like collaborating and contributing back to projects that have helped them get to the point where they are today.
When I program for pleasure, I'll do whatever I want and leave unfinished pieces all over the place.
When I program for work, I'm getting paid for something someone else wants me to do. I'm I'm not getting paid, then I'm not working on that code. If that makes me a 501 programmer than so be it.
Yes, about half the manifesto is reasonable, and the other half comes off like unmotivated students who get mad at the nerds for messing up the curve.
That's how some programmers's brain being wired: category, structured, organized, etc. I'm guessing it is mainly because of the work we do every single day, single second, of our life, i.e.: that's what we do and we, fortunately or not, applied it to our daily life.
I don't think that's entirely fair; I can pretty handily separate myself and other CS majors into those who spend their weekends/late nights doing hackathons and such, and those who pursue hobbies and activities separate from programming/development.
In my experience, the latter doesn't specifically have less zeal for programming than the former; it's just balanced by enthusiasm for other subjects and interests. The point that there are many 9-5 programmers who treat it as a career and nothing else is well taken; that being said, you don't have to be spending the overwhelming majority of your waking hours in a terminal or IDE to love programming.