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It's hard to constantly reinvent the universe to make it fun again. Oh, look at us, 'young' programmers and admins, our early 30s: how many of us have been doi

It's hard to constantly reinvent the universe to make it fun again. Oh, look at us, 'young' programmers and admins, our early 30s: how many of us have been doing this stuff for 15 years now? And to already be weary of the daily grind, to have discovered cynicism prematurely. How do I awaken to the realm each morning, doe-eyed and blissful to learn new secrets? This venue is beyond familiar. I think I know the dance moves all my heart. And if there are more to find, my heart has grown too shallow to push blood at my feet to dance. I look in other windows, other professions, and see such ripe opportunities to improve their process. Faulty confidence? To swap careers with another forlorn professional, just long enough to rediscover why programming is indeed a for the young at heart. This weird intersection of procedure and creativity, the nexus of writer's block and chasing the bottom line, how do we keep it all together for the decades to come?

auggierose 13y ago
One of the first things I programmed when I was a kid was a parser (and calculator) for arithmetic expressions. It was hand coded, in Quick Basic (the interpreter version that came for free with MS DOS), and quite bad code, as I had never before read anything about how to do it. And I had a lot of fun! Last week (about 22 years later) I programmed a new generator for scannerless context free parsing which takes layout into account, using my own special variant of Earley parsing. And I had a lot of fun!
testing12341234 13y ago
I beat the grind by moving from domain to domain every few years. Real estate, finance, power sports (Motorcycle/ATV), etc. I am constantly re-inventing the wheel, but each wheel comes with it's own set of problems. I have found that it's quite enjoyable learning about these other domains just for their own sake. It's also nice to pick up skills like 'what to look for in a house', 'how to tell which dealership to purchase a vehicle from', etc.

auggierose 13y ago

One of the first things I programmed when I was a kid was a parser (and calculator) for arithmetic expressions. It was hand coded, in Quick Basic (the interpreter version that came for free with MS DOS), and quite bad code, as I had never before read anything about how to do it. And I had a lot of fun! Last week (about 22 years later) I programmed a new generator for scannerless context free parsing which takes layout into account, using my own special variant of Earley parsing. And I had a lot of fun!

testing12341234 13y ago

I beat the grind by moving from domain to domain every few years. Real estate, finance, power sports (Motorcycle/ATV), etc. I am constantly re-inventing the wheel, but each wheel comes with it's own set of problems. I have found that it's quite enjoyable learning about these other domains just for their own sake. It's also nice to pick up skills like 'what to look for in a house', 'how to tell which dealership to purchase a vehicle from', etc.