To me, boring programming implies having to perform a repetitive task that requires little mental effort. I don't think I've ever come across a programming prob

To me, boring programming implies having to perform a repetitive task that requires little mental effort. I don't think I've ever come across a programming problem that was both dull and not potentially automatable. The difficulty with automation is that it can take longer than solving the problem by hand. But I'd contend this is a short-term viewpoint. First, very few problems are entirely unique; there's always some general component that they have in common with other problems you may have, even if that general component is not immediately obvious. Automating a system now almost always means less work in future. Second, at least in my experience, a programmer would much rather write a program to do something boring than do it him or herself. Automating a repetitive task is immensely satisfying, especially if it continues to save time again in future. If you work for a company that encourages programmers to automate everything, you're probably a lot more motivated than a programmer that has to do something excruciatingly repetitive, and a lot less likely to be checking recruitment agencies. When I starting working for my current employer, a lot of things were hastily done and there was a lot of repetition. Over time, we've snuck in hours here and there to improve our processes. Not as much as I'd like, but enough that we've slowly made progress, and each time we've automated something it's been an interesting and rewarding task. After suffering through manually doing X for the last N weeks, it's very satisfying to ensure you never ever have to do that again.