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I'm in my mid 40s, and started programming for fun / challenge 35 years ago. For the first time in my life, my answer would seem to be no, I'm not. I'm not sure
by psyc 5y ago
I'm in my mid 40s, and started programming for fun / challenge 35 years ago. For the first time in my life, my answer would seem to be no, I'm not. I'm not sure exactly why. Some form of long-term burnout perhaps. Working in the industry for 20 years certainly disillusioned me, on balance, more than it inspired me. But I sort of non-committaly retired 4 years ago, so in theory had time to recover if it was that.
The last time I wrote code for fun was in 2019 when I went through all the easy and medium leetcodes and quite enjoyed it. More recently this year I got around to finishing all the pretend-assembly-language Zachtronics games (TIS-100, Shenzhen IO, Exapunks), and had a lot of fun there too. But for the first time I'm not working on any real personal projects, despite that my notebook of ideas is as full as ever.
I still believe in these ideas and want to see them realized. But at this point, working on any of them implies writing / adapting tons of things I've already written. Probably a lot of things I've already written 3 times or more. But that doesn't quite seem like a reason either, since I always used to love rewriting things. I don't feel depressed - quite happy actually. It's just that when I open a project and look at the code and start thinking about the next steps, I'm just like "Nah."