Don’t Pursue Programming if You Aren’t Passionate About It
Articles like this seem to be promoting the Cognitive dissonance that most developers hold. Namely: 1. I need to be always learning about programming, even on my spare time! 2. Work&#x2F;life balance is important.<p>&quot;Imagine a doctor who doesn’t actually like helping people with their health problems. Or an automotive engineer who actually thinks cars are stupid and boring.&quot;<p>Lots of doctors and automotive engineers just do their job and then come home, in fact most employees don&#x27;t come home and continue to work on semi work related things on their spare time. My wife is a civil engineer and yet she doesn&#x27;t build a 1&#x2F;16 scale bridge in our basement when she comes home. Does that make her a bad civil engineer?<p>&quot;If you aren’t passionate about programming I don’t think you should become a coder.&quot;<p>&quot;... lifetime of constantly learning and working in your spare time ... to keep your skillset fresh and relevant.&quot;<p>I have asked a few programmers I know what makes a successful programmer and I have always gotten the answer of &quot;passion&quot;. But what even is passion? Maybe they are super passionate about VB and FactoryFactoryObservers? Is that good passion? Okay our field changes a lot. but then shouldn&#x27;t seek the ability and willingness to learn rather then some vague &#x27;passion&#x27;. Employers should also set up our teams in such a way that learning is encouraged. (Work Time + Money for conferences&#x2F;continuing education.)<p>Edit: Changed the first cognitive dissonance to include the term programming as that was my implied but not stated meaning.