Such a great quote. I think the thing is that people weight these "joys" differently. I know that for me the learning part is probably the most important: I lov

Such a great quote. I think the thing is that people weight these "joys" differently. I know that for me the learning part is probably the most important: I love the feeling of becoming better and getting a deeper understanding of unfamiliar systems. Doing the same kind of coding for decades in the same language seems very dreary to me. On the other hand, the "making things that are useful to other people" is not that important to me. I mean, it's nice when the stuff I make is useful to other people, but it's not the primary thing that makes me love programming. So, I think the thing is that you need to figure out why you loved it in the first place? Is it "joy of learning"? In that case: go find a weird new programming language and dive deep into it (become one of those weirdos that think everything should be made in Haskell or Prolog!). If on the other hand you like making things that other people find useful, go look for open source projects you can contribute to. Think deeply about what it was that made you love programming in the first place, and what parts are missing now that existed back then.