I started programming on the family computer at 11, because I was curious how video games where made and I wanted to try to make my own (it never really happene

I started programming on the family computer at 11, because I was curious how video games where made and I wanted to try to make my own (it never really happened in the end!). In the end, I caught the programming bug. The act of programming was in itself magical. And it felt like a super power. From website to making art using some procedural algorithm, to making little games and solving them with genetic algorithm, everything felt fun. Even though the learning part could be complex and tedious, being able to approach it however I desire made sure that I kept my motivation. So when I had to choose what I was going to study after high school, I already knew. And this is when it started to go downhill. Not that school wasn't fun in its own way, and I did learn a bunch of things. But the more rigid form of learning and the mandatory exam still chip away at my motivation. And then work. It really makes you understand the concept of Alienation. Your agency is (mostly) taken away. You don't get to work on what you want, how you want it, with the tools you might prefer. You have limited ability to influence the direction of the project, to propose new ideas, etc ... Your self-expression, which for me was a important part of programming, is repressed. It gets better with time and experience. And some company are better than other at letting you experiment and learn new things. But coding various part of a UI for another business related backoffice, will never be as fun as spawning whole world from a few lines of code, reverse engineering a protocol to create your own client, making gfx, creating a small website for you friend's band, ... Work is work, and when your hobby turn to work, it can feel very frustrating at time. Especially since, after a day of "work" coding, my motivation for "hobby" coding is reduce to ashes. But at the same time, I don´t see myself doing anything else.