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I used to feel this way, and I wanted to rekindle the fire I felt when I was younger and absolutely in love, mesmerized with writing software. After a few years

I used to feel this way, and I wanted to rekindle the fire I felt when I was younger and absolutely in love, mesmerized with writing software. After a few years of that, I went into the professional world, and can relate to how you and others in this thread feel, about the dullness and lack of satisfaction. I remembered those times, though, and I kept looking for something to do. I realized what the difference was: Back then, I was programming for myself, for the enjoyment of it. I was dogfooding everything, at times I was not only the top user, but the only user of my software. So I went back to doing that, and I can happily report that I feel that way again. It can be done, don't give up hope.

wiz21c 6y ago
Yeah, back in the days I was in the demoscene, coding for fun. 25 years later, I started coding demos, on Apple 2 (yep, that old machine I had when I was kind). You can call it nostalgia, but hey, that's coding for fun, pushing the machine to the limit, taking time to optimize for speed or memory instead of customer's satisfaction. Plus you get to meet other passionnated people, like before. So yeah, it's somewhat "going back", but at least, I can express creativity in some unbounded ways. Plus, I code my dream, not the dream of the company which is paying me :-)
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  Nice! I decided to go back to the old Web days and write something which really does work in ANY browser. So far, I've reached back to Netscape 2.x and Mosaic :)
  - PlumboTaskall 6y ago
    So all you need is Safari support. Should be easy right. Jeeve Stobbb$
- register 6y ago
  I am going trough the same stage and started developing the game that I wanted to develop as a kid on my first home computer: a Commodore 16. At the time I learnt to program in 7501 ASM ( a 6502 derived CPU ) but the endeavour was too much for a kid given the tools of the time. Nowadays is way easier: I have a sort of IDE built over emacs, can easily design ( and rip ) sprites and charsets, can mix code in macro ASM and a C-like language and can easily debug on an emulator. It's really a joy!
davb 6y ago
I've had a similar experience. Every time I get a glimmer of an idea of something I'd have fun building, my thoughts immediately go to my devops workflow, hosting, cross platform, updates, testing, security, tax, patents, viability assessment... and my professional experience has suffocated my idea before I've even built a fun prototype just for myself.

wiz21c 6y ago

Yeah, back in the days I was in the demoscene, coding for fun. 25 years later, I started coding demos, on Apple 2 (yep, that old machine I had when I was kind). You can call it nostalgia, but hey, that's coding for fun, pushing the machine to the limit, taking time to optimize for speed or memory instead of customer's satisfaction. Plus you get to meet other passionnated people, like before. So yeah, it's somewhat "going back", but at least, I can express creativity in some unbounded ways. Plus, I code my dream, not the dream of the company which is paying me :-)

forgotmypw17 6y ago
Nice! I decided to go back to the old Web days and write something which really does work in ANY browser. So far, I've reached back to Netscape 2.x and Mosaic :)
- PlumboTaskall 6y ago
  So all you need is Safari support. Should be easy right. Jeeve Stobbb$
register 6y ago
I am going trough the same stage and started developing the game that I wanted to develop as a kid on my first home computer: a Commodore 16. At the time I learnt to program in 7501 ASM ( a 6502 derived CPU ) but the endeavour was too much for a kid given the tools of the time. Nowadays is way easier: I have a sort of IDE built over emacs, can easily design ( and rip ) sprites and charsets, can mix code in macro ASM and a C-like language and can easily debug on an emulator. It's really a joy!

davb 6y ago

I've had a similar experience. Every time I get a glimmer of an idea of something I'd have fun building, my thoughts immediately go to my devops workflow, hosting, cross platform, updates, testing, security, tax, patents, viability assessment... and my professional experience has suffocated my idea before I've even built a fun prototype just for myself.