Do you actually enjoy making things with code? Leaving aside the mostly BS algorithmic interview fodder (you're never going to use any of that until the next jo

Do you actually enjoy making things with code? Leaving aside the mostly BS algorithmic interview fodder (you're never going to use any of that until the next job search at 99% of places), when was the last time you just wrote some code to do something you wanted to do, or screwed around with a library or a framework for the hell of it? Have you done any real software development work in the past? Most of what I do as a software engineer is not particularly complicated; it's playing with Legos or akin to construction tradework. I've got to have attention to detail, and a mental map of how the piece fits into the whole, but it's not super clever or complicated. And I try my damndest to avoid things that are clever or complex, because they're usually far too easy to get wrong, and create too much work for future-me down the road. A startling percentage of my time is just doing variations on database crud operations and munging data from one source through some transformations and pushing it at some destination.