Why I Love Coding (2012)
I feel like I’ve lost most of my interest in it. It’s been years since I’ve been truly excited by it and and motivated to do it, but I had been on and off the edge, losing interest for long periods of time before a random spark of motivation would bring it back, only to go out within a few months at most, and after the most recent spark, I’m not sure if I can see myself coming back to programming.<p>It’s a strange feeling, as this has been my “thing” for many years now, both as a hobbyist and a professional. I can’t exactly pinpoint why the situation feels different this time. Until a few weeks ago I had dozens of interesting projects lined up and had invested money into at least a couple of them. I think part of it is that I lost a sense of “magic” that once enticed me. Whereas when I was still very new to me there was a lot of software I would think about and wonder “wow this seems incredibly complicated, I wonder how it works”. When I returned to learn about it whenever. A lot of thing seemed like sorcery, and I just needed to know how it worked. Well years later, when I decided to return to those sort of things, more experienced, I would start to dig in, only feel a bit disappointed when I figured it out and it was no longer cool or interesting. That’s not to say I’m an expert or that I know how everything works and implement it all, just that I can generally get the idea and that causes the magic to evaporate. Additionally I’m beginning notice a mismatch between interest and ability in a lot of things. I find myself unable to learn and implement the things I’m interested in. While that may sound like it’s in opposition with the my first theory, it’s not really. There’s a lot of things where I have a general mid-high level idea of how they work, but couldn’t implement if you asked me to right now.<p>I’m probably going to focus on other interests of mine for the time being, though I’m sure I’ll never truly be divorced from programming. Additionally, I have a feeling that the problems I noted in the previous paragraphs will eventually wither away my other interests as well. I figure simply return to it in a much different and reduced manor. I’m also considering giving it up professionally, but I’ll have to see how that ends up.