I just want to code (2023)

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

>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 think it's more common because one doing only coding can get paid reasonably. On the contrary, few people who "bake cakes for fun, make music for fun, write poems, novels, play chess for fun, practice sports, grow potatos" can get paid enough for a living, so that's usually not an option to consider. (Which is the reason that I find us coding people very lucky.)

> 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 ...

One reason is that coding is so much more scalable than all of those. There are loads of stories of people who made some small thing that was useful, and were able to make a tidy profit on it (or sometimes a fairly large one).

I enjoy making homemade wines. Occasionally someone will try something I've made and ask if I'm thinking about selling it professionally. No way -- it's a fun hobby, but definitely not something I want to do in enough scale to be self-supporting.

I also enjoy languages, and developed an algorithm for helping me find material to read that's at the right level -- only a handful of words that I don't know. It's been incredibly helpful for me, and I'm sure it could be incredibly helpful to millions of people out there as well; so I quit my job and am trying to figure out how to make that happen:

https://www.laleolanguage.com

One can combat it by just choosing discipline, grit, perseverance and stop boxing themselves into angel vs devil kind of thinking. You are either working for self or working for someone else.

Life is rather what you make of it than the society perception of it.

> 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.

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.

Do you keep ownership over those tools when they're integrated into your employer's product? What are the terms on your employment contract? This can get muddy.

Can’t everyone read public repo data?

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…

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.

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'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).

You wanted to get rich in the philosophy mines while coding as a hobby?

Be cool if you pulled it off.

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."