Hacker News Reader

If it turns into treating it as a “should” then my experience is yes, definitely, that’s a death knell for basically anything. Without the “should” it continues to be fun. The trick is threading that needle.

It is said that God wrote the entire language for to use in a book and that we shall model ourselves off of it. Once it was done, God turns his back on the book and Satan sneaked in and added two words - "Should" and "Aught".

In my experience this is more related to treating the hobby like a chore or job instead of doing it for the fun of it, even though you're bad at it.

I think the relationship is kinda the other way around - you'll feel like your hobby is "serious" when you stop having fun with it.

This hasnt my been my experience. I continue to love basketball despite being bad at it for years regardless of how much "serious" training I do.

Been writing code for 25 years, 15 professional. Still enjoy it just as much.