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Ask HN: Do you regret becoming a programmer?

• leed25d 8y ago
  I have been programming professionally since 1974. I have never had any regrets.
  • abenedic 8y ago
    > I have never had any regrets. You have lived a very charmed life.
• aogl 8y ago
  tldr; "no" I have been programming since I was 11 when I first started in Turbo Pascal and Borland C++ (somewhat simultaneously), I then started working as a teenager doing freelance work and getting some cash on the side (which was great). I never had internet back then as it wasn't around yet, so learning to get programs to work and debugging things was a minefield, and I loved it! I then moved countries and got work visas on my ability, bought houses and raised a family, spoilt everyone along the way. I'm glad I made those decisions more than 20 years ago, and I still enjoy everyday and what I do!
  • rboyd 8y ago
    twins. I was born in 82 and the borland pascal and c++ compilers were my first "real" languages after some qbasic. that feeling when you'd stay up all night long stuck on a problem with nowhere to turn for help, then finally, eureka. oh also, mode 13h.
• 27182818284 8y ago
  I think I regret becoming a programmer, but I do not regret knowing how to write programs. If that makes sense.
  • casper345 8y ago
    As In programming has helped your mind think in different ways, but the profession is no longer appealing to you?
• rajeshpant 8y ago
  No regrets in becoming programmer. But I regret the way programmers are treated in industry these days. It went from a niche profession to industrial worker. Being a programmer these days is similar to a worker working in a car assembly line.
  • zzzcpan 8y ago
    Yeah, it seems programming as a career sucks. But the ability, skill itself is wonderful, nothing else compares to it.
    • sova 8y ago
      Very much agree with you here. I have not been able to secure the superb job I dream of yet, but my skills have gotten to the point where a teenage version of myself would definitely ask, "How the hell did you do that?!" =)
  • abenedic 8y ago
    I think the idea from a corporate perspective has always been the idea of a programmer as an industrial worker. Just as dispensable, and just as replaceable. Luckily reality has not borne that out.
• HNHNHNHNHNHN 8y ago
  Regret is a subjective feeling, not always related to validity or usefulness. A better question could be what pitfalls to avoid when becoming a programmer, or when choosing a career path, etc. The question may also suffer from sampling bias: -Is a programmer and does not regret it (represented) -Is a programmer and regrets it (represented, less likely to respond) -Is not a programmer and does not regret it (not represented) -Is not a programmer and regrets it (not represented)
  • casper345 8y ago
    Well to be fair, I am not really interested in non programmers since the question is focused on individuals who considered themselves programmers and their reflection on that.
  • casper345 8y ago
    Also my question is not about improving oneself in programming. Today there is alot of glamourizing of programmer sso would be interested to hear from people on the other end.aka I'm looking for subjectivity
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• bobochan 8y ago
  Not once. I have been doing it for just over 30 years now and I run up the steps to fire up emacs every morning. I have lived through an amazing time, from an Apple ][+ with 16k plugged into a black and white TV to mobile and communication technology today that feels like science fiction. I am very excited to see what the next ten years or so will bring.
  • chrisbennet 8y ago
    Same here (30 years). If I didn’t have so much interesting work I would program in my free time. I just really like it.
  • sh87 8y ago
    > I run up the steps to fire up emacs every morning. Not an emacs user but that made me smile.
• Someone1234 8y ago
  Do I regret working certain places and on certain technology? Sure. But I cannot think of another career that still pays reasonably well, offers creative freedom, good job prospects, advancement avenues, and a fast changing ecosystem to keep things fresh-ish. Only large downside is the age-ism in the industry. Hopefully I won't be looking for work in my 60s.
• dirtylowprofile 8y ago
  No regrets.
• growlist 8y ago
  Absolutely not. Programming is about the only thing that keeps me going in tech. I cannot wait to ditch the data and application software consultancy I am required to do at present, because they lower my salary and kill my motivation.
• phakding 8y ago
  This profession lifted me out of poverty and made it possible to take up hobbies without having to think about money. I am thankful.
  • iothetiger 8y ago
    Same story here. Never got a BA, mainly because I was raised in a culture of poverty. By the time I was working as an engineer in 2000's SF it never made sense to go back. Now I feel discriminated against by organizations who feel it is a requirement. Luckily at 39 years of age with former employer prepping for an IPO I'm ready to go back to my blue collar roots and start building homes in the Sierra foothills.
• thwy12321 8y ago
  I regret working a job as a programmer, I dont regret programming as an activity
• Koshkin 8y ago
  I wish I did.
• sosilkj 8y ago
  Yes. i wish i'd gone into finance or accounting or something. i believe i would be in a much better place financially today, and the career path would have been much easier to navigate: ever met someone in finance who studied for months to get ready for an interview? me neither. the software profession is very two-tiered: you either get a job at a FAANG or FAANG-equiv firm whre the pay is good and there are the opportunities for growth ... and then there's everything else. in many places it goes like this: you're very much treated like a cog, managers -- and "project managers" especially -- won't have any real understanding of what engineers do, there is disorganization, lack of planning, and/or engineers have never been challenged to grow, and over time you end up dealing with lots of tirefires. if i knew of a way to do something different while maintaining my current income, i would do it.
  • abenedic 8y ago
    > ever met someone in finance who studied for months to get ready for an interview? me neither. I have. My roommate in college. A lot of students in his group studied very year for internships with finance companies.
  • solipsism 8y ago
    And you think the average accountant is in a better place? Accounting often requires long hours (seasonally), and isn't usually particularly well compensated.
  • steve1977 8y ago
    > in many places it goes like this: you're very much treated like a cog, managers -- and "project managers" especially -- won't have any real understanding of what engineers do, there is disorganization, lack of planning, and/or engineers have never been challenged to grow, and over time you end up dealing with lots of tirefires. You'll hear the same complaints from finance people.
• aprdm 8y ago
  Allowed me to travel the world always making the top percentile of the local population and have a very good life. Super creative and challenging job ! Maybe I was lucky in that I worked in amazing companies but I've never had jobs where I felt like a cog. I've also never worked at a FAANG. Only think I would say is that every company I worked (for the most part) had an R&D department or mentality and was product driven. Needless to say software was always the differentiator of the product.
• plinkplonk 8y ago
  a more interesting question might be "Do you regret staying a programmer (after the first n years)?"
• pr813 8y ago
  Yes. I think I could have excelled in other areas. As a programmer I'm just average or below average. I was quite motivated and bright in my youth, and could have picked a number of careers where I had some skills. Decided to go with programming because I was excellent in math (and liked it), and wanted to do something applied instead of teaching. Coming from a poor background, I had ZERO knowledge about what programming is really like as a career, and what other applied math careers exist out there. I thought if you study math, you become a teacher. There were also other areas besides math that I liked and excelled at, so I could have picked a number of those. So when I started with CS, I was already late in the game compared to others who started younger, had very little support in my learning and no peers to connect with as a woman in 90's/early 00's. It resulted in stumbling around a lot in my career and ending up as a probably below average programmer. Also realized too late that it's going to be very hard to find any math-intensive work as a programmer unless you hold a PhD. Add to that some discrimination - I think young girls today have it a bit better than before, but women above 35, moms? Not many people want that. I had to remove my picture from LinkedIn because it got me less recruiter hits WITH a professional picture.
  • itamarst 8y ago
    For what it's worth, there are areas where you can do math-intensive stuff without a PhD. E.g. personally after not doing anything math-y for two decades I stumbled into a job doing image processing. There's also graphics programming, although I get the impression that can be extra toxic environment. However, https://twitter.com/sehurlburt https://twitter.com/sehurlburt will occasionally post links to companies that aren't toxic that are hiring people, and some of them are welcoming to people without prior knowledge of the specific domain. E.g. https://twitter.com/sehurlburt/status/1043182104140345345 https://twitter.com/sehurlburt/status/1043182104140345345
    • shoo 8y ago
      > For what it's worth, there are areas where you can do math-intensive stuff without a PhD. i agree. there aren't a huge abundance of such job opportunities, but there are a few out there. for me it was a few years doing development with splashes of applied operations research (discrete optimisation, liner programming, etc).
• alimw 8y ago
  Yes. If you don't know how to do the grunt work then noone's going to be able to make you do it. In one job I ended up spending most of my time programming for my junior's project simply because she couldn't (or wouldn't) do it herself. When the company was taken over she kept her job but I lost mine.
• twoquestions 8y ago
  No, I took this job to free people from having to do unnecessary work. I just wish it resulted in people having more choice in how to use their time, rather than cutting regular people out of their livelihood and concentrating wealth.
• parvatzar 8y ago
  I have no regrets as such on choosing this profession, since its been a passion since the very first time I saw a computer. The regret however, is doing this for over 6 years now and not having upgraded with a post graduate degree i.e either a MS or MBA. This gradually becomes a regret when I see my colleagues from engineering having moved on to higher or better positions financially.
• mrdependable 8y ago
  I enjoyed programming when I was younger, but didn't really consider it as a career until I needed to make money. I've had other jobs and this certainly takes the cake compared to those, but I hate that all my productivity requires me to be sitting in front of a computer. I don't really get any satisfaction from my work either, but I've accepted that as part of life. Need to put food on the table somehow. If I had to do it over again though, I probably would choose something that requires me to be out and about more.
• arayh 8y ago
  When I was younger, I was deciding between a career as a programmer or an artist. I went with the logical conclusion that the former would be more financially stable than the latter. I don't regret this decision, as I do find programming work compelling. There are always many new things to learn and new challenges to overcome.
• lastofus 8y ago
  I regret that I will have RSI pain in my arms for the rest of my life. Chronic pain is depressing.
• vinayms 8y ago
  No. I always had a purpose to program more than the client needing it. I have always worked on products, and was always allowed to explore my creativity, so that might also be a reason. Programming was always "goal oriented" for me - either having to simulate an engine for my BE project, or creating components for our products to differentiate from our competitors, thus maximizing hikes which allowed me to pursue other interests, or lately, starting my own company. So, while I have experienced several minor burnouts, which lasted many weeks to a few months, I have never had any regrets. I hope to gracefully transition to pursuing other interests in a few years, and I will fondly remember this programming phase. Based on that experience, my guess is that those who regret are usually those who just go through the motions. They most likely don't have side projects, or ideas to pursue, and the monotone of programming gets to them. Lets face it, our industry is all about repackaging the same old solutions, but for different clients, and that's quite boring. I like to imagine that engineers in other fields do a lot more than what programmers do, which makes things different even when repackaging solutions, but I could be wrong. In Indian context, there are many people I know, ranging from senior engineer or VP, working in multi national companies, with very good salaries, but are quite disenchanted with their jobs because they are nothing more than glorified bricklayers working in India while the architects send out instructions sitting in USA or Europe.
• krapp 8y ago
  No. I do regret going to school to become a programmer so close to 40, because being a 40 year old programmer with newbie skills and no professional experience makes getting hired in an already difficult market just slightly more difficult. So now I pay down my student loans doing other things and write code on the side and educate myself online.
• jperras 8y ago
  Sometimes. I studied physics at a well respected, internationally recognized university, and had made all the right connections to get into a masters/PhD programme for particle physics. I ended up not pursuing that path because at the time I found programming & software development more interesting, and more lucrative (this latter is still true - there's no money in physics). But, at times, I wish I could go back and do it all differently. I often lament the knowledge I've essentially forgotten, and leaf through some old textbooks and papers nostalgically.
• stephen82 8y ago
  Have I regretted for majoring Computer Science? 1 million percent yes! Have I regretted becoming a programmer? I have no idea, as I was never given the opportunity to become one! I'm 36, a genuine generalist, the standard "jack of all trades, master of none", and obviously I'm doomed in this miserable field. Am I looking for something else to do? Yep, but I have no prior experience to anything else. If I had the opportunity to travel back in time and kick my butt for choosing computers and technology, I would gladly do so. I miss my childhood so much...no cell phones, no internet, no FaceBook or Instagram. I feel like a 90 year old grumpy grandpa -_-
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• sh87 8y ago
  No, not yet.