I personally find software development to be enchanting and am often thankful to have a job like this.
I get to make in the comfort of my home creations where I am only limited by my knowledge, imagination, and attention. I can experiment easily and explore completely different designs with an ease that any other discipline would be envious of. And then I can allow millions or billions to have access my creation with ease.
That seems pretty enchanting and almost god-like and magical to me.
Seems as good a place as any to ask: how do I get back to this state?
I used to feel exactly this way, but after 3 years now slinging code for money I’ve become very disillusioned. Anyone have any tips for finding the magic again?
Do you remember how cool building software was when you were starting out? The only problem then was you couldn't. Well now you can, most people don't realize that. You can create the software for your loved one, or friend, or yourself that you always wanted.
The thing is to take it slow. Use a language you always wanted to use. Change that color scheme. And when you type, do so slowly, cherishing each keystroke.
We take so much for granted. The fact that writing text can make atoms move about and transistors turn on or off millions of times a second is just astonishing. You are taking part in humanity's most sacred rituals. Give it it's due and soon you will have the love come back.
Write a lecture about best practices to avoid burnout.
Computer science is such a new human endeavor that there is so much uncharted territory about what the future of training the next generation looks like.
Obviously, some pretty bad habits led to the massive amount of burnout I am seeing amongst computer scientists.
Find another profession and make programming a hobby instead.
Some fortunate people can make their professional life also their passion and derive fulfillness from it, but not everyone can be like that. For everyone else, work makes damn near anything miserable even if it's something you otherwise love.
You loved programming before you made money from it, and you hate programming now that you make money from it. The problem is clearly money and you need to decouple it from programming.
Yes, I'm aware changing your line of work is more easier said than done, but that's the only proper way of resolving your conflict in my opinion.
i did this, i get much more enjoyment from computing and tech without all the tedium, and i can dream of projects i want to work on (and sometimes do them :p) - only for my own enjoyment ofc.
Both. It feels even now like we're just monkeys sitting on a tower of cards swinging around tools we don't understand. There are a lot of very smart people that have built the software and hardware we have today, and lots of smart people coming in to replace them; but the majority of engineers are not that, and (myself included) largely pretend at being wizards while in reality we are all the sorcerer's apprentice.
The systems we've built for society are even worse. For every story about how tech is improving lives, you hear another two about yet another horrible dystopian usecase for the same technology, and it's never hard to imagine a dozen more.
Back in the mists of time at BigCo internship day1, the incoming cohort of interns was briefed by outgoing cohort, without managers present. One of their pearls of wisdom was that a great manager (and by extension, team) could lead and defend an oasis of excellence in a desert of industry detritus. Today, this dynamic can also be seen in serial founding teams and spinoff projects.
If time is more spiral than linear, then cyclical patterns are not merely swings of a pendulum, but a recursive opportunity for redemption or relapse. In that worldview, merely waiting would be enough to experience a different set of local maxima. But human actors with agency can move to new contexts instead of waiting for cyclical change, or work with peers to spark new cycles.
Stargate/Fringe/Eureka posit multiple universes and versions of ourselves, each universe further having multiple timelines. If it were possible for us to see an infinite tapestry of futures, would we be invigorated or paralyzed by choice? Looking in the other direction, we have access to the near-infinite, unfinished work of our ancestors, some of whom deserve the sorcerer moniker.
One way to gain perspective on local minima/maxima is to step back to a different scale of time or space. The classic film "Powers of 10" [1] offers a spatial perspective. There are history of technology books which span decades to centuries, showing recurring patterns of both good and bad. One tiny example is the decoding of the Maya language, which was unsolved for centuries, then cracked by an art history teacher on vacation.
There is a 1930s sci-fi book [2] which spans 2 billion years and many generations of humans going through cycles of technology and social structures. The successor book has an even longer timeframe. As a thought exercise, it leaves one with the impression that everything has already happened before, and will happen again, but slightly differently in future spirals of time and space. Where does that leave mortal humans prioritizing action within finite lifespans?
If we can't find a sorcerer from whom to learn, we can choose which sorcery we want to teach. Be the change.
> For every story about how tech is improving lives, you hear another two about yet another horrible dystopian usecase for the same technology, and it's never hard to imagine a dozen more.
If one looks into the history of tech, they can find initially benevolent tech that was twisted into dystopian purposes. But there are also examples of tech designed for one purpose, later adapted to positive use. Even hostile social media can be tamed by manually curated lists of non-hostile writers. With the proliferation of open-source, it has never been easier to Embrace & Extend, or harder to choose a direction.
If you have the space/time/tools to build something tangible that fuses software with the physical world, it can combine the dream-catcher inspiration of software with physical constraint. If lacking inspiration, recreate a pioneering tech demo or meet a hyper-local need, then extend that foundation.
I get to make in the comfort of my home creations where I am only limited by my knowledge, imagination, and attention. I can experiment easily and explore completely different designs with an ease that any other discipline would be envious of. And then I can allow millions or billions to have access my creation with ease.
That seems pretty enchanting and almost god-like and magical to me.