> I started asking myself questions like — "Even if the projects I'm doing succeeded beyond my wildest expectations, how would it affect people? If you only de

> I started asking myself questions like — "Even if the projects I'm doing succeeded beyond my wildest expectations, how would it affect people? If you only derive meaning from end results programming is probably not for you. It's a craft that requires you to enjoy the process as much if not more than the end result. But if you want to get philosophical then the other thing about functional information, just like any technology is that you usually cannot predict the complete effect on society. If you create useful things that are at least not intentionally malicious or dangerous, then you will likely be doing a net good. ...The magnitude of this good can never accurately be predicted, however a decent heuristic is how _general_ it is - e.g if you are making something as contextually contrived as a shopping app to try and "help people keep track of what they need to buy", your net good is going to be pretty fucking low, and I know focusing on the smartphone app bubble tends to result in mindless crap like this - so if you were doing that, then fair enough I'd quit too... On the other hand - go make some contribution to a fundamentally new piece of code solving a _real_ problem and the possibilities are much greater.