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Comment by asdf6969 | Hacker News Reader

Bad advice. Most people are not deciding between coding and some other great job that they’re passionate about. I’m not passionate about coding at all and never have been but I can’t imagine anything better. Pay and work life balance are way too good

I agree with the other guy in this thread. Loving your job is a luxury that most people can’t afford

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My argument is that you had a harder time of it than someone who was passionate about it. I said it wasn't impossible. And I trust you wanted it enough to get it.

Edit: I've seen many students who apparently have better things to do with their time than study CS. I'm not judging. Like I said, I have better things to do with my time than study to be a CPA.

I lost most of my passion for coding when I started doing it for a living. It pretty quickly became just a job. Still one that I like doing, but I don't think about code outside of work very much.

Every once in a while I'll hear about something that sounds interesting and get into it. I taught myself Erlang/OTP but have never used it professsionally, for example. But that's like a once-every-5-years kind of thing, and it's been more than 5 years already since I did that.

Yeah, I think it's a form of self-flattery or gatekeeping for programmers to say that you need passion or drive to have a career in tech--outside of the upper echelons, you clearly don't. In this respect it's a mundane occupation like most others, and I wouldn't expect coders to be any more passionate about their work than nurses or plumbers or accountants.

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