Man, I work 8-4 Mon-Fri.
As soon as 4 rolls around, I'm done with the money making portion of the day and the rest is just entirely fun stuff. I couldn't care less if what I'm doing isn't ever going to make money, it's just fun / interesting / satisfying curiosity.
I run - but I know I'm never going to make money running. I climb - but I know I'm never going to make money climbing. I code for fun on my side projects - same deal.
That work mindset gets turned off hard at 4pm.
I would like to be able to do that - I have such a long list of things I want to learn and do - but I can't just turn off my work brain at 4pm. I get sucked in by interesting problems. Low level optimization? They pay me for 9-5, but you can bet I'll be thinking about it over the weekend, maybe code up a potential solution.
I used to think less about people who check out at 5pm - how can you just leave and not give a shit that the code is a mess? - but as I grew older, I understood that they don't associate their self-worth with work. Their value system is different, and it's got benefits, like better mental health.
I think part of the author's point is that, specifically if you are _coding_ for fun, it is much harder to "turn off" that part of your brain that analyzes it from a business perspective. It's not as if you can close one IDE at 4 and open another IDE at 4:01 at put yourself in a different mindset.
Fellow climber/coder... Where you climbing these days?
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I have no idea why they mention coding. It is the same in any kind of job. You can bake cakes for fun, make music for fun, write poems, novels, play chess for fun, practice sports, grow potatos ...
At a certain stage, you realize that in order to be able to do only that job, you must make someone pay you for it. You must do it in a way (or in a volume) which makes others happy. The fact that it makes you happy is not enough anymore.
I don't think there is an angel and a devil. It is still the same thing. If you like the result of your work, there is a high chance that others will like it. You don't need to change what you do by a 100%. Changing it by 5% - 10% is often enough.
Do many people hobby code with that entrepreneur mindset thing? Or sit down to play guitar thinking they want to make a hit and feeling bad if they just noodle some cover songs? What a miserable existence that must be. How do you get that way? Should we blame LinkedIn or what is it?
I will preface this by saying that, I decided to stop pursuing a job as a software developer because my 2 years of work experience mean nothing in the job market.
Now that I ended up finding a job as a waiter (of all things) I finally enjoy learning new things again. Before, I would get chronically stressed researching the job market, gathering keywords from job openings, consuming Udemy courses at 2x speed, using AI to plan the project and scaffold it. I was writing projects to save my life, because my finances are just that bad.
Surrendering and giving up the pursuit of work made all this mental load go away, and ironically made me progress in a personal skill level faster than anything else. I can now learn deeply. I can tinker with code to my heart's content. I can see all the warnings. I can research why this and that happen, without feeling like I have to "sigma grindset" every second.
Perhaps when the storm is gone with the whole "AI is gonna take our jobs" and the market demanding every keyword match, and I feel more confident in myself I'll try to get professional again. Or not. All I know is that I love programming.
Because having your own product is something that on paper sounds extremely rewarding. If you do it well, the maintenance might be less than the work you put in your actual job.
Some people want to break out of the cycle, and you can't really blame them for it when the economy is hurting working people (ofcourse excluding that writing software is relative to other jobs a cushion job)
Seems reasonable that you would struggle with the opportunity cost of your time when you're writing software for fun since you could also be working towards a greater goal of launching something that might make money.
Software is relatively unique because of the multiplying effects of software (without banking on a moonshot) unlike, say, carpentry or strumming a guitar. So the opportunity cost can be even higher.
You should always be cognizant of opportunity costs because they're always in play. And I can see that getting away from people, especially if you haven't already achieved your financial life goals.
I feel similar when I try to play a game in my 30s. It feels like a huge waste of time compared to something that would advance me towards my aspirations. But I think that's just part of being an adult. Just be aware of the trade you're making.
This is a reaction that I had for a time, until realizing that outside of just "some people are different", there is also the wider protestant work ethic putting work at the center of their life, and assigning a moral value to productive work.
I'm describing it in too vague terms to be appropriate, and most people might be thinking it in that way, but I genuinely think there's a part of it in a lot of the "I did this paid service as a weekend project" mentality.
I had my own company previously and I found it hard to detangle that commercial mindset from hobby coding. I’m employed now and find it much easier to code purely for fun.
If I played guitar professionally then I’d probably find it hard to not think about new pieces in the context of a gig-worthy repertoire.
When I was younger, early in my career, I coded to learn more about what I was doing at work. Pure career progression.
The older I get, the less I care about career progression and the more I allow myself to just use code to explore thoughts or ideas.
What a miserable existence that must be.
This ignores the fact that people are motivated by different things. If you're someone who thrives on the intrinsic 'do this for the love and joy of it' motivation then you should absolutely just write code for the fun of it. But not everyone is like that. Some people need an extrinsic motivator to drive them to do things - that's usually money, or praise, or a punishment for failing. There is nothing wrong with either approach. Neither is better.
Many people think that they just have to write some code and execute it publicly and they'll somehow be provided for. That can sully recreational coding since it makes it hard to see that it will most definitely not be directly profitable without a lot of non-coding labour.
Doing business is demanding, you've got compliance and documentation and code needs to be intelligible to other people and finances and marketing and planning and customer support and all that domain knowledge that allows you to catch more than one or two paying customers because your solution works in most of a sector of society and so on.
With this in mind you'll have an easy time seeing that your for fun, recreational project is not a business and that you can't think of it as one until users are starting to force you to by being so many or offering money for additional services.
Sure. I used to enjoy playing the Sims until I had that gut realisation that I was trying to get them to grind out better lives, when I should just spend that time doing it for myself.
I also bought Shenzhen I/O, because the idea of being able to program in a game seems fun. But after reading more, I didn't end up playing it because it would involve too much study of how the in-game computers work, and I'd get much more long-term satisfaction from studying real assembly languages etc.
Some of us do. The hobby may consist of simulating the professional experience, but to a limited extent and on our own terms. For instance in my own case, I play an instrument -- the double bass -- and I perform sporadically. When I practice at home, I'm aware of the qualifications and competency of a professional bassist, I measure myself against those standards, and try to keep improving.
This doesn't detract from the pleasure of playing, at all. If anything, it gives me some structure and motivation. And I still don't mind noodling for a while when I need a distraction that doesn't involve a screen.
But I only count the money that I make, because I have to report it. ;-)
Coding is a small but very fun part of my business. I code for fun because I can afford to, but most people need to put bread on the table, so they must remain competitive.
I do both of those, it's a constant battle in my own head. I'm always reminding myself that it's ok to make music just for my own enjoyment, and that don't need a potential monetary angle for some hobby.
I'm not justifying this mindset, which preceded LinkedIn. I don't like it.
>Do many people hobby code with that entrepreneur mindset thing? Or sit down to play guitar thinking they want to make a hit and feeling bad if they just noodle some cover songs?
I absolutely do. Money and power is a great motivator. I don't feel bad about any of it. I took my shot and continue to do so.
>What a miserable existence that must be. How do you get that way? Should we blame LinkedIn or what is it?
It was not. I made some good side money. I always joke that I program to feed my computer habit. The benefit of it is you actually code like you are making a product, and there is usually a big skill difference between someone coding for fun and someone coding to make an actual sellable product; it's the 80/20 rule. That last 80% is what separates the good from the great. Like Jobs said, "Real artists ship."
I've found that just writing code only takes me so far, I need to share as well to feel good about it. But sharing anything outside of the ordinary with the world means painting a pretty big target on your back. On the positive side, it also opens up an avenue for getting paid.
My point is that if you start with the fun and let it grow from there, and you're willing to go through the discomfort of sharing, it doesn't have to be either or.
> share as well to feel good about it. But
I wish to share, but not to helicopter parent. I've long felt this case ill served, from 1995 Perl CPAN's "you own the package name" (vs author-packagename-version triples), to 2025 github's impoverished support for communities of forks. No "past me wrote this; present me frees it to jam; future me isn't involved - play well together, and maybe someday I'll listen in or drop by". The emphasis has been on human ownership/control of code, and of limited human collaboration, rather than on code getting out there, building friendships and communities, having fun and flourishing with the humans.
I used to think the same thing, that sharing was caring. Now, for me, I would rather share with non-coders. So now everything is communicated as a product summary, not a coding project.
Sounds like a conflict between wanting to do something you love, and wanting success and fame. Nothing wrong with either of these things, or trying to have both. But what you might be missing is that the way you pursue these things has a much larger impact on the outcome than simply whether you make an attempt or not.
You might have been reading all those stories of startups, and now you're stuck in a box shaped like all those stories. That you have to start a startup at all, or that you have to go about it in the way those stories told. You might think that's your only path. But the only limits in this world are the ones we put on ourselves.
Meditate on what you really want, at your core. Start the wheels turning of thinking of ways to get those things that aren't immediately obvious or don't seem likely. Consider a world in which you didn't have fear, doubt, anxiety, or other kinds of limitations. Which path would you choose? What are all the ways you might use to walk that path? You don't need to know the whole path to start walking on it.
Just a suggestion: The github permissions your comment login thing requests is a bit too aggressive.
> This application will be able to read and write all public repository data.
Can’t everyone read public repo data?
Outside of professional software jobs, for me code is also a form of personal expression. I code for work. But I also code for fun. Although there is some overlap in the experience between the two, the two forms of coding are wildly different.
I probably don't need to explain much about coding at work. It's not just about "writing code". It's about software engineering. It's a responsibility that requires professionalism, discipline, and care. The real focus isn't the code itself. The focus is first and foremost on the business problems. Good code, good algorithms, and solid engineering practices are simply means to an end in solving those problems effectively.
But in my free time, coding is something else entirely. It's a form of art and expressing myself. It all started with IBM PC Logo and GW-BASIC, where writing code to draw patterns on the screen was my way of creating art. While some kids painted with brushes and watercolours, I painted with code and CGA colours.
Coding in my leisure time is a way for me to create, explore, and express my silly ideas without the constraints of business requirements or deadlines. It's where I get to experiment, play, and bring ideas, no matter how trivial or pointless, to life purely for the joy of it. Occasionally, these small experiments evolve into something I'm comfortable sharing online. That's when I write up a README.md, add a LICENSE.md, commit the code to my repo, and push it to GitHub or Codeberg to share with others hoping fellow like-minded individuals might find joy or utility in these experiments.
Fortunately, I've been able to release a few projects that have gathered small communities of users. For example, my last such project was https://susam.net/myrgb.html which, as far as I can tell, has got about 50 to 60 daily users. It's a small number but it's not nothing. While coding for leisure has always been enjoyable, the presence of these small communities has also been quite motivating.
I think it is possible to do both with some luck. While coding for work happens almost everyday by necessity, I think coding for leisure can also happen along with it, provided other circumstances of life don't get in the way. If circumstances allow, it is certainly possible. It doesn't have to happen everyday. I know everyone has got responsibilities in their lives. I've got too. But it can happen once in a while, when a spark of inspiration strikes. For me, it usually happens on some weekends when I get an itch to explore an idea, something I feel compelled to implement and see through.
For me, this has somehow gotten to a point where I keep questioning myself if I’m actually doing something out of curiosity or because of the idea I could share something with other people or some other motive. So I’m not even sure what I’m curious about anymore, which might sound ridiculous.
Hey, don't worry. In my book, if you do something because you want to share it, then you're still interested in it enough (or curious about if you want). You just like to share, and that's okay.
It's also a good filter for topics. Naturally, the topics of interest of others seem more valuable.
I am doing a similar thing on my blog. Generally, each topic must pass the test of: is this useful to at least some? And being commited to write means I can clarify and organize my thoughts.
So nothing to worry about, keep on experimenting and sharing.
>No one likes schleps, but hackers especially dislike them. Most hackers who start startups wish they could do it by just writing some clever software, putting it on a server somewhere, and watching the money roll in—without ever having to talk to users, or negotiate with other companies, or deal with other people's broken code. Maybe that's possible, but I haven't seen it.
>One of the many things we do at Y Combinator is teach hackers about the inevitability of schleps. No, you can't start a startup by just writing code. I remember going through this realization myself. There was a point in 1995 when I was still trying to convince myself I could start a company by just writing code. But I soon learned from experience that schleps are not merely inevitable, but pretty much what business consists of. A company is defined by the schleps it will undertake.
>The most striking example I know of schlep blindness is Stripe, or rather Stripe's idea. For over a decade, every hacker who'd ever had to process payments online knew how painful the experience was.
A lot of why people didn't build Stripe before was that to enter the payments space you needed connections to get the banks and payment processors to work with you. In comparison, you don't need anyone's permission to make uber for dry cleaners or something in line with other trends of the time. I doubt the Collison brothers would have been as successful getting Stripe off the ground if it had been their first company.
This is hardly the point, but pg's use of schlep is jarring: it's primarily a verb ("to schlep"), but the noun form almost uniformly requires an article ("the schlep").
"No one likes schleps" should be "no one likes to schlep."
Am I the only coder who has never really felt the desire to "be my own boss" and get rich from coding?
I was so against the idea, actually, that I avoided majoring in CS because I didn't want to ruin my favorite hobby by doing it professionally.
It wasn't until a few years after I graduated with my philosophy degree and couldn't find a career that I decided to try writing code for a living.
It's been great for me for almost 20 years now, and thankfully I still love to code for fun even though I do it all day professionally, but I have not felt the pull to try to form my own startup and try to get rich.
My favorite part of coding is having a problem and then figuring out how to solve it with the tools I have. I love working as a programmer because that is what I do all day, and someone pays me really good money to do it.
And I don't have to worry about all the other stuff like business models or funding or getting customers or talking to people, I just get a problem and do my favorite thing to solve it.
And I have more time to do other things because I am not hustling or trying to get rich.
I like programming for my friends. The moment money gets involved it goes to shit. Idea guys want you to program for free , and offer you something like 1% vested over 5 years.
They have you sign NDAs before you start working. The ideas are all really really stupid.
I do have my ideas, but I’m also humble enough to just accept I’ll probably never make any real money. I self taught my way straight to 6 figures ( back in 2016 when that still meant something). That’s enough really…
Yeah, I don't want to code for equity, either. I just want to code for a flat paycheck, with maybe an equity bonus. I have been able to do this for 18 years now.
First thing for wannabe enterpreneurs to learn is that allmost all your ideas are shit, and those that are good still need a lot of luck and the best execution to get somewhere. How many good ideas didn't work for first startups that came with it, but worked for someone else years later?
You're in the 99%. It's just that the other 1% write all the blog posts.
I never thought that I would "be my own boss" after making the moves needed to go beyond just being a hobbyist, but I was quickly shown that I'm essentially unemployable.
It's been 2 years, and I can proudly say that i'm finally making more money than I did delivering packages on a bicycle in SF, which isn't much.
Getting rich was never in the cards for me, but not having to answer to a tyrannical boss every day is definitely a positive. Coming from a blue-collar background, that's pretty much the norm, and that sentiment has stuck with me.
What makes you "essentially unemployable"?
I think a mindset to "get rich" or even worse "get rich quickly" is reallt bad for everyone even outside tech. There is certain amount of wealth you need so you need not to worry about food, shelter, kids, education, health, etc, that's all right, but beyond that it's just getting destructive. When do you feel "rich enough" already? $1M? $100M? If you don't worry about getting rich and just be ok with being mid-class, you can code whatever you like. Even without getting single dime from the hobby code you will learn a lot, you will get good with tools and quick to find solutions, easier to be employed and progress in your career. And I would believe happier in the long run.
Speaking only for myself, I never wanted to be rich. It would have been nice to have the money, but I never wanted to make the sacrifices necessary.
I also didn't want to be used by some predator, to make them rich. I found a [less-than-perfect, but OK] company to work for, that had values I liked, and stayed there, for a long time. I got to hang with the really cool kids. I mean the ones that were so cool, no one knew who they were, because they didn't care about being cool. They just liked doing what they were doing, and they were the best at it.
I was the dumbest kid in the room, and I'm smarter than the average bear. I also got to play with some very cool toys.
But I was a manager, for most of that time, and I didn't want to give up coding. I didn't have a "shower clause" in my employment contract, so I spent a great deal of my extracurricular time, doing open-source stuff. I had an organization that could use my skills, so I worked with them.
Eventually, the cool ride was over (after almost 27 years), and I found myself ready to roll up my sleeves, and help make someone else rich.
But no one wanted me, so I was forced to retire, and I've never been happier.
I was just talking about this, yesterday, to a friend of mine, who sold his company, and is getting set to become a Man of Leisure. He's like me. He needs something to do, and I suspect that he'll do something cool.
I mentioned how upset I was, when I figured out that no one wanted me, but, after a year or so of following my own muse, I realized that I had been working at a state of chronic, low-grade misery, for over 30 years. I probably work harder now, than I ever did, drawing a salary, and I absolutely love it. This is what I've been working on, for the last month or so[0]. Still have a ways to go, but it's coming along great, and I've been learning a lot.
Here's a post that I wrote, some time ago, about how I like to approach things[1].
[0] https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/ambiamara/tree/master/...
[1] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships...
> I didn't have a "shower clause" in my employment contract
what's a shower clause?
EDIT:
"That’s the clause that says your employer owns every idea that you come up with in the shower."
I don't want to be rich either, but it would be awesome to FIRE before I'm 65.
I'm wondering what a "shower clause" would be in a contract and hoping it's not a Silkwood reference.
I'm the same, I started coding as a kid on an Amiga 500. But I never thought it would become my job. I studied a degree in communication and worked as a journalist first, then as a press agent. Later I decided to move to a different country where I could not work in PR or journalism due to language barriers so I went back to programming. Eventually I even went back to Uni and got a degree in IT because I felt that I had some knowledge gaps due to being self-taught. Going back to uni in my mid 30s was actually a cool experience (despite the fact that I had to study & work at the same time).
> try to form my own startup and try to get rich
You don't have to do the kind of startup that is worshipped here on HN.
You wanted to get rich in the philosophy mines while coding as a hobby?
Be cool if you pulled it off.
My plan was to be a stand up philosopher
I code purely for fun, creating programs that generate and compose music. Sometimes I hit the record button and capture the results.
Here's one of my latest recordings, if anyone's interested: https://lowveld.bandcamp.com/album/etches.
Musically I think this belongs in the underground - and should stay there.
I'm very interested in the theory behind software & music. Over the years I've mostly focused on the engineering side, but maybe one day I'll document and publish more about it too.
I'd love to read some of these programs and/or read about the process of writing them. "Etches 04" is awesome, it sounds like I'm looking out at some post-apocalyptic cityscape. Please do drop a line if you publish anything.
Interested. Would like to hear more (of the music, and what you code).
I've always thought of myself as a struggling artist and musician first, code being one of many avenues to express myself, and also to pay the bills until I got into more managerial roles, and now I get to use it more creatively or in pursuit of creative endeavors rather than during work time, and it is incredibly liberating.
>In a perfect world, I could listen to the angel and solely get by having fun and working on things I enjoy. But if I didn't listen to the devil from time to time, I wouldn't stay up to date with the latest technologies, and as a result I wouldn't be able to pay my bills.
Why do you need to listen to the devil to stay up to date with the latest technologies? You don't need to work on something monetizable to stay up on the latest technologies. You can work on something for fun and incorporate some of the latest technologies to learn about them at the same time.
As I get older I find myself embracing the angel more and more. I've met a lot of programmers that got what the devil was offering by only listening to the angel.
My angel and devil have reverse roles.
My angel wants me to do my side hustles and produce well made products. For the users and myself. But he sits behind me in the corner now with a bitter face. Neglected and left out.
The devil took over making me work for money, sell my hours for the high bidder, for current income. So I could provide for the three most precious ladies in the world: my wife and daughters.
The devil turned out to be not a powerful figure but a ruthless but pity, sweaty salesguy selling crap that I stuck in. Need to carry on with the technology mandated in the position, outdating as we speak, making me increasingly unemployable elsewhere without the 10 years hands on coding experience in 15 kinds of 2 - 7 years old technology, with leadership and mentor abilities of course as an essential trait required. Willing to be enthusiastically agile the hell out of it! For free pizza and fruit bowl!
No good path ahead.
This resonates greatly with me.
It used to be such a torture (in my own mind) to constantly trying to come up with a new hustle.
But not anymore. As I got older and after fatherhood, I have learned that balance is everything. Including valueing my time in having fun doing productive things.
If the hacking side project gives me tremendous enjoyment, then it is a win already both from happiness and the “job training” aspect.
As it so happened, I just hang out with my little cousins who are into robotics and so glad that my side projects in the past helped me connect with them, and I was able to give valuable advice. That was a big win for me.
Also, I have learned the value of providing stability for my own family. Something that the childless me never appreciated. Throwing away stability to start a startup has a steep cost these days.
I feel like there's some middle ground that OP is missing. Perhaps intentionally, but that might not be for everyone.
I worked for software/hardware companies for 21 years. Some were stable income for me, but nothing amazing. A few were startups where I worked hard but they didn't go anywhere (fortunately I earned a stable, market-rate income before they failed). One turned out to be reasonably life-changing, and I'm very lucky for that. On and off over that period of time I worked on open source projects, some that didn't go anywhere, some that have been successful.
Right now I'm building something to try to sell. I'm not going to take any VC money or pursue high growth. I'm not chasing the latest whiz-bang AI whatever. I'm building a fairly boring product (that is still fun for me to build), using the tech stack that I want, to the standards of quality that I want. Right now I'm working hard on it, but the goal is that, once it's "done" and has customers (fingers crossed I manage to attract paying customers), I'll be spending no more than 10 hours a week on it (and hopefully less on average). If it "only" gets to $500k/yr in revenue or so, after some number of years running it, I'll consider that a fantastic success. If I can run the entire thing on one or two VMs, and it never grows past that infra-wise, that's a fantastic success.
You can listen to both the angel and the devil and still control your own destiny, outside of the scraps your employer will throw at you. Who knows, though, maybe this idea of mine won't work. But I'm happy I'm giving it a try.
Coding is another tool, just the same way you buy a piece of furniture online you can also build it yourself, if you have the tools and skills. It's up to you how you want to use your resources (time and money).
Coding is a tool to solve data problems, I've been doing it for close to two decades now and I still find it fulfilling and fun. Many years ago I used to think, I love my job that I would do my job for free ... I was wrong! Others will paid for doing things you find fun, make sure you know your worth.
But shipping is in service of curiosity, though! There is nothing more fascinating than watching your work come into contact with real users. They will find error modes and use-cases you never imagined. If you code for fun and no-one ever sees it, then you'll never have this experience.
There's more than code to build a startup. I have found the best way for me to avoid burnout or alternatively feeling like i am behind is to set very high goals. Find a lifetime goal. Maybe it's making a startup, maybe it's something else. Everything you do should mostly fit into some super long term plan that could take an entire lifetime's worth of work. If you are doing creative or personal projects, these build skill and experience which will be needed by that long term project. Martial artists train by punching trees. To build micro fractures in the hand bones and increase the density and strength of these bones. Go punch your trees.
> But if I didn't listen to the devil from time to time, I wouldn't stay up to date with the latest technologies, and as a result I wouldn't be able to pay my bills.
It appears to imply that new technologies do not count as fun, which may be the case for the author, but not generally. And there are indeed fewer open vacancies requiring older (decades old) technologies exclusively, with vacancies often including currently-hyped technologies in addition to established ones, which opens more options and potentially leads to a higher salary if one employs those newer or hyped ones, but I guess that it is quite possible to pay the bills while using mostly the older ones, too.
Love it, perfect length and cadence for a blog post (imho). Stayed focused on personal perspective / experience. Perfect minimally distracting amount of CSS. Perfect skimmability that drew me in to read in more detail. And a perfect conclusion that I just happen to agree with.
When you start coding and start having fun, please remember that the "fun" doesn't apply to coding as profession. The same goes for any other profession. Doing something for fun vs professionally are two different worlds.
If you have issues with having proper material compensation for your work, you will have to work on those first before anything else.
Doing necessary work, even when you don't like is for me the definition of "work". You should also learn to manage it, if you work too much, you should take a break.
You don't need to get rich as "billionaire", but if you are good at your work it is reasonable that you will get "millionaire", because you gave society tens of times more value that what you got.
That is not something to be ashamed of. If you got the money gambling(taking it from someone else) you can feel ashamed, but not if you made money generating wealth with effort and work.
For me personally, there's no dilemma. I was landed a pretty good, high-paying job after showing my pretty sophisticated pet projects I made for the fun of it. In my free time, I keep making pet projects out of "curiosity, enlightenment, and purity", and if some have potential, I showcase them to the employer and they're integrated into the product, or as a dev tool. Builds a good resume, too. Maybe I'm lucky that my employer is open to new ideas/projects. So, both the angel and the devil are satisfied :)
I've thought that recently there are things I'm willing to build, things I'm willing to sell, and things I'm willing to support. My desire for each is not in equal measure. There are vastly more things I will build for myself then I can sell, and there are a lot of things I like selling but I hate supporting. Only when I feel the trifecta do I release it to the public. The rest I tell myself I can just enjoy the process of building and throwing it away if I want, it doesn't matter.
I've actually been thinking about this a bunch the last couple of months and it's a truly painful dilemna!
At a high level, for those of us who code outside of work, we're constantly faced with the choice of either working on something that we find interesting vs. something that would further our careers. It's awesome when they align, but it can be painful when they don't.
I sometimes feel guilty when I choose to work on passion projects... but if I instead choose work on professional development, I feel like my creative soul starts to wither a bit.
At least for me, I enjoy trying to solve problems using code. Kind of like how some people enjoy solving cross-words, math problems, and what have you.
As for the larger things that could potentially lead to a business, those types of problems usually come from something I encounter at work. If I'm stuck using software that sucks, identify some obvious demand, etc.
This is basically what I am thinking about in the past few months. When everybody is talking about AI but you don't buy it.
I am concerned about the authors propensity for taking pop cultural memes very very seriously. Somewhere in here is a lightbulb waiting to go off and a complete human ready to be born. Maybe consider going camping.
…man never regards what he possesses as so much his own, as what he does; and the labourer who tends a garden is perhaps in a truer sense its owner, than the listless voluptuary who enjoys its fruits…In view of this consideration, it seems as if all peasants and craftsman might be elevated into artists; that is, men who love their labour for its own sake, improve it by their own plastic genius and inventive skill, and thereby cultivate their intellect, ennoble their character, and exalt and refine their pleasures. And so humanity would be ennobled by the very things which now, though beautiful in themselves, so often serve to degrade it…But, still, freedom is undoubtedly the indispensable condition, without which even the pursuits most congenial to individual human nature, can never succeed in producing such salutary influences. Whatever does not spring from a man’s free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being, but remains alien to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness…
…we may admire what he does, but we despise what he is.
https://readmorestuff.wordpress.com/2009/11/30/extracts-from...
I just want to kick back and code like it's 199NaN
its the opposite for me, I always choose to have fun, instead making mone, 0 motivation to chase the later. I wish I tend to my devil side :(
> I watched an Amazon Prime knockoff of Silicon Valley called Betas
Not sure you can call it a knockoff if it came out a year earlier!
i feel this deep, it's way too easy to forget why i started coding in the first place
(2023)
The angel is human curiosity and the devil here is capitalism society pressures. be you.
Honestly, the text looks like it was written by someone who does not understand hobbyist programming.
It's not fun. The activity is not an enjoyable act of entertainment. It's stressful, time consuming and miserable.
The result is what matters. You did something. Learned something. For you, not because it was in some work planning. It provides catharsis.
That sort of catharsis does not exist in some work related environment. It never will, unless stars align magically, which they almost never do.
I am highly skeptic of this "code is fun" perspective. Always was.
That's why "all your base belong to us" kind of contracts in which stuff made outside work COULD become property of the hiring company makes otherwise happy developers into depressive under-productive nightmares. Let them code the toy thing unharmed in their spare time, for fucks sake.
Let it be the real thing. Stop this nonsense fairytale.
It is for your own good. It prevents companies from hiring con men, it prevents young folk from being drawn to a career they will despise, it prevents massive loss of investment.
I wanted to code for catharsis. To learn. To feel I made something. Wanted, past tense. These "code for fun" people were serious contributors to my burnout.