Ask HN:Ok to be in programming if you hate the process but love the result?
When I fall into the mindset of just the end goal, my 9 to 5 becomes hell.<p>There is a lot of busy work googling and finding code on Stackoverflow to solve some tedious problem.  It&#x27;s not exactly fun, and if I get stuck googling for a day or two on a single problem it&#x27;s incredibly stressful.<p>Alternatively, I put on my research hat and see the source code and the tech stack as a series of questions and unknowns I have yet to figure out.  Every piece of tech has a story of what the world was like before it, and that tech is the solution that was created to fill that need.<p>When I put on my research hat I slow down, and focus on learning everything around me inside and out, bit by bit.  If I google vocabulary I&#x27;m unfamiliar with and end up on a Wikipedia page, this might lead to a handful of new questions.  I recursively learn everything around me.<p>There is a middle ground between research and getting the product out the door.  When this middle ground is found, not only is development accelerated, but work becomes smooth sailing.  You become an expert in the tech around you, and if you learn it properly you only have to learn it once.  After a few months of doing this you stop having to Google so much.  You start being able to help others around you.  The pressure of the goal stops becoming the obstacle and the challenge of writing code that minimizes future bugs and increases readability fades into the forefront.<p>Unless it&#x27;s crunch time, being tightly focused on the end goal is one of the least productive and most painful ways to write software.  There are better ways to go about being a software engineer that are at least worth considering.