I’ve always noticed that some programmers are only doing it as a job because the pay (was) alright and it was a better job than picking fruit or being an accounts receivable clerk.
then there were those folks who wanted to know how everything worked, were always looking at the latest framework, language or platform, and wanted to build new shiny things in code.
I started to program in the early 80s. Games. Sold, I got royalties, it helped me to pay studied and travel. Programming was kind of fun, especially with machine code. Code was lean and simple. You might need 20 lines to make one thing but the set of instructions was limited.
Now, at 53, I stated to program again. One pretty ambitious program simulating oil and gas upstream, from block acquisition to decommissioning, through seismic, drilling, development, production etc.
I use unity 3D, c#.
Programming is not fun anymore. I spend my time looking for the proper class, among the hundreds available. It is a tedious job: one has an idea, and then I spend the next 2-3 days sieving online manual for something which will have taken 2-3 h with a “low level language”. I have the feeling that coding is now a low level task, involving a very good memory and using pre-developped packages. Deep frozen food cuisine…
Olivier Malinur I think it really depends on the area of programming you are in and the purpose. There was a lot of fun in the old style of writing assembly code but that era is long past, it went away along with the extreme solitude of pre-internet computing (it does still exist though as retro computing which is a very internet age kind of thing).
Programming is so much easier today but we also expect do much more and there is simply so much stuff out there that you can utilise. Nobody writes it all themselves anymore so you’re always building on top of something. I still think though that there is always something interesting in that. These days I’m more interested in the way coding gets done, how to negotiate through and to evolve a code base. There are still new paradigms that are slowly making themselves understood by working engineers. Sometimes it takes decades for those ideas to filter through.
That said, I must say I find object oriented programming extremely boring and tedious. Make sure to use a language that uses functions as first class entities.
Since I turn 50 in October of this year, it’s pretty easy for me to say, “yes”. BUT, I have learned to distinguish in my mind (and heart) between what I get paid to do, and what I do for fun.
I get paid to do a lot of programming that seems to involve using a much taller stack of libraries and abstractions than it should. I am not the only one who thinks this. But, you know what, it’s their nickel, so I do it, as well as I know how.
One thing that helps a lot is to do only short-to-medium term programming (9 months maximum). That helps me to stay mentally limber (new workplace once or twice a year makes it impossible to get stuck in a rut), and also I find makes the emotional part of my brain much better able to keep in mind, “they’re paying me, not the other way around”.
Then, I can use what I’ve learned (including, most definitely, patterns I saw at work that I do NOT want to use), and do programming for myself, for fun. The work programming can be fun, if I think of it as another example of how software can develop, and I analyze how it got this way, and how it could have been avoided. While part of my mind is doing the drudgery I am being paid for, another part is analyzing the pathology of it. That is actually a fascinating problem. Given that this isn’t how it should be, HOW did it get this way? And how could it be avoided next time?
That’s pretty much how I see things Ross Hartshorn . Trying to find the points of potential evolvability is a preexisting code base can be an interesting challenge.
John Hardy Developer 
I’ve always noticed that some programmers are only doing it as a job because the pay (was) alright and it was a better job than picking fruit or being an accounts receivable clerk.
then there were those folks who wanted to know how everything worked, were always looking at the latest framework, language or platform, and wanted to build new shiny things in code.
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Disclaimer: I am a geologist, not an IT engineer.
I started to program in the early 80s. Games. Sold, I got royalties, it helped me to pay studied and travel. Programming was kind of fun, especially with machine code. Code was lean and simple. You might need 20 lines to make one thing but the set of instructions was limited.
Now, at 53, I stated to program again. One pretty ambitious program simulating oil and gas upstream, from block acquisition to decommissioning, through seismic, drilling, development, production etc.
I use unity 3D, c#.
Programming is not fun anymore. I spend my time looking for the proper class, among the hundreds available. It is a tedious job: one has an idea, and then I spend the next 2-3 days sieving online manual for something which will have taken 2-3 h with a “low level language”. I have the feeling that coding is now a low level task, involving a very good memory and using pre-developped packages. Deep frozen food cuisine…
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I will stop programming when they pry the keyboard from my cold dead fingers.
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Olivier Malinur I think it really depends on the area of programming you are in and the purpose. There was a lot of fun in the old style of writing assembly code but that era is long past, it went away along with the extreme solitude of pre-internet computing (it does still exist though as retro computing which is a very internet age kind of thing).
Programming is so much easier today but we also expect do much more and there is simply so much stuff out there that you can utilise. Nobody writes it all themselves anymore so you’re always building on top of something. I still think though that there is always something interesting in that. These days I’m more interested in the way coding gets done, how to negotiate through and to evolve a code base. There are still new paradigms that are slowly making themselves understood by working engineers. Sometimes it takes decades for those ideas to filter through.
That said, I must say I find object oriented programming extremely boring and tedious. Make sure to use a language that uses functions as first class entities.
LikeLike
Since I turn 50 in October of this year, it’s pretty easy for me to say, “yes”. BUT, I have learned to distinguish in my mind (and heart) between what I get paid to do, and what I do for fun.
I get paid to do a lot of programming that seems to involve using a much taller stack of libraries and abstractions than it should. I am not the only one who thinks this. But, you know what, it’s their nickel, so I do it, as well as I know how.
One thing that helps a lot is to do only short-to-medium term programming (9 months maximum). That helps me to stay mentally limber (new workplace once or twice a year makes it impossible to get stuck in a rut), and also I find makes the emotional part of my brain much better able to keep in mind, “they’re paying me, not the other way around”.
Then, I can use what I’ve learned (including, most definitely, patterns I saw at work that I do NOT want to use), and do programming for myself, for fun. The work programming can be fun, if I think of it as another example of how software can develop, and I analyze how it got this way, and how it could have been avoided. While part of my mind is doing the drudgery I am being paid for, another part is analyzing the pathology of it. That is actually a fascinating problem. Given that this isn’t how it should be, HOW did it get this way? And how could it be avoided next time?
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I am still doing this after 50, so yes.
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That’s pretty much how I see things Ross Hartshorn . Trying to find the points of potential evolvability is a preexisting code base can be an interesting challenge.
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I turned 50 a few years ago
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