Things continue like this in the workplace too. Whatever the industry is you get into programming, the challenges are mostly the same. You run into the same p

Things continue like this in the workplace too. Whatever the industry is you get into programming, the challenges are mostly the same. You run into the same problem time and again, because the problems that industry need solved are all very similar, and mostly not that complicated. Accept user input, shuffle the input through whatever language you are programming in, query/update a database, shuffle the results through whatever language you are programming in, display the results. The business will demand these constant features, that are all mostly the same and when you've mastered what the business requires, it will be up to you to continue your education and improve your programming skills. Either by jumping jobs to one that focuses on a different area of programming... from a web stack to an iPhone app, or embedded systems... or you have to learn it on your own because work only need you to know the minimum required to get the product out and the minimum is only challenging and fun for so long. Learning to learn on your own is important, most programmers don't do it, they get to a certain level and do not progress. I don't mean to sound discouraging, there is a lot of intellectual challenge along the way, and little is as satisfying as sitting down and creating a great product or solving a particularly difficult challenge. I always feel something is missing on days I don't get to program.