Surviving Disillusionment
<i>&gt;I&#x27;ve met many engineers with extraordinary talent who decided to stop making software. They wanted to program computers all their lives. They were born for it. After spending six, eight, ten years in the industry, they quit for good. [...] Something had to have gone wrong for them to abandon their first love.</i><p><i>&gt;But sitting at a mandated retrospective or mindlessly gluing APIs together doesn&#x27;t put me over the moon. It makes me feel the opposite (whatever the opposite of being over the moon is).</i><p>I like Slava Akhmechet essays but this theme of disillusionment doesn&#x27;t resonate with me.<p>As background, a relevant wikpedia article when thinking of personal change:  End-of-history illusion[1]<p>I used to think I became disillusioned because the industry was &quot;getting worse&quot;.  But I changed my mind because it&#x27;s just too convenient that my peak of creative excitement and wonder about technology just <i>happened to coincide</i> with the <i>&quot;good old days&quot;</i>.<p>My opinion changed when the new iPhone came out in 2007 and I noticed I was <i>not excited</i> about it.  How can that be?  How can I spend all-nighters messing around with less powerful 8-bit and 16-bit toy computers and not also be obsessed with the idea of playing with the new Apple gadget that&#x27;s 1000x more powerful?!?<p>I had to dissect this strange contradiction.  I finally had to admit that <i>it&#x27;s because I simply got older</i>.  As another extreme example, as a little boy I used to be <i>excited about hopping on escalators and elevators</i> because they were like fun little amusement rides.  But now, they&#x27;re everyday boring.  Escalators didn&#x27;t change; I changed.<p>I remember being a teen at a loud rock concert and thinking about no old people being there and being confused as <i>&quot;how can anybody ever stop going to concerts?&quot;</i>  Well, it turns out I stopped too.  I won&#x27;t blame disillusionment.  Instead, I just got bored of it.  I still like live music but not enough to go out of my way to buy expensive tickets and deal with the traffic jam to get back home.<p>I used read lots of fiction.  I don&#x27;t anymore.  Fiction author Philip Roth also stopped reading[2] others&#x27; fiction when he got older.  I&#x27;m sure today&#x27;s fiction is just fine.  But my motivation to read it isn&#x27;t there anymore.  I won&#x27;t blame the book industry and I&#x27;m not disillusioned about fiction.  I&#x27;m just a different person now.<p>Is it disillusionment or just getting older?  There are confounding variables.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;End-of-history_illusion#:~:text=The end-of-history illusion,or mature in the future" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;End-of-history_illusion#:~:tex...</a>.<p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;culture&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2011&#x2F;06&#x2F;philip-roth-ive-stopped-reading-fiction&#x2F;352196&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;culture&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2011&#x2F;06&#x2F;philip-r...</a>