For me the fun of programming came back when I allowed myself to do things that are completely useless, apart from the fact that it brings me joy. It started wi

For me the fun of programming came back when I allowed myself to do things that are completely useless, apart from the fact that it brings me joy. It started with 6502 assembly programming for a breadboard computer I built. Right now I am programming C using old Borland tools on an old MS DOS computer. Again, super useless, but oh so fun. And who knows, maybe this new knowledge will be useful professionally one day (I learned a lot about very low level computer concepts, and I didn’t know C before), but that is totally not the goal. Just the absence of the pressure to be useful brought back all the fun for me.