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Programming is nothing but transforming data from one form into another. Once you reach a level of competency where like the author of this article you can imp

Programming is nothing but transforming data from one form into another. Once you reach a level of competency where like the author of this article you can implement any kind of transform you like then 99% of programming becomes rather boring. Sure there are still the 1% of interesting problems and algorithms that are fun to work on, but you can only implement so many basic CRUD API's, and boilerplate business logic classes, and cut and paste website designs before you tire of that stuff. After 30+ years of coding I'm sure the author of this article has implemented pretty much everything she has ever wanted to. It's natural that she would find implementing the same things over and over again for other people to be unrewarding, and instead desire to pursue the new challenge of designing an interesting new product of her own.

deirdresm 11y ago
Yep, you've got it. Once I realized I had the skill to accomplish a workable version of anything is when I started noticing that there weren't many problems I cared enough about to feel like they were worth my time. There are things I'm interested in implementing still. I still enjoy working in Ruby, and my Python's gotten rusty, but I actually work mostly in PHP these days (because of WordPress). I keep promising myself to learn Swift, but I lack Swift-type problems to solve that I care about. The other thing, as one gets older and has a lot more experience: how much of your remaining unknown quantity of time are you willing to spend doing programming vs. some of your other life goals?