4 ms·

This about sums it up for me as well. I feel so absurdly lucky that what I love to do also pays well. If programming paid like shit, I don't think I would be a

• prox 6y ago
  This is a great place to be. Do you think one needs a certain level of mastery to come to that point though? When you are still struggling learning, the endless reading on topic X can be tiring and exhausting, especially in the context of deadlines.
  • noisy_boy 6y ago
    As a self-taught programmer, I think the level of skill doesn't matter as such. I remember gobbling up a book I found on Unix commands when I was learning shell scripting eons ago. It was a rough start as the whole thing was totally new to me. I was mainly driven by being able to accomplish what I wanted using code (I am very lazy and hated the daily manual execution of the steps). Once I had a poorly setup script working, things that propelled me forward were my need to continuously find ways to refine the code in terms of elegance, performance and brevity - the satisfaction/high of accomplishing these things was enough feedback to get me hooked.
    • sokoloff 6y ago
      Agreed. I think of it as the linear equation y = m*x + b As soon as you get to the point where m is positive (you have learned enough to be able to make things a little better on your own, even if using google for parts), you’re off to the races. m dominates b in that equation as x (time) increases.