

Ask HN: What do you do when you realize you are not a programmer? - notastartup

I just read this quote from a blog posted over at bootstrappers.io and I had an epiphany.<p><pre><code>    ...I Am Not A Programmer. I’m not and I don’t 
    want to be one either. I just want my stuff to 
    work and not break. Programming is not my 
    passion. Making stuff is my passion. Just as I 
    don’t like mathematics, but I like how you can 
    apply it to build a skyscraper.
</code></pre>
I&#x27;ve been making web applications over the past 5 years, mostly stuff I wanted to make. I also worked building other people&#x27;s products for salary. But at the end of the day, what I was working on and how much I believed in the product directly correlated to how much I enjoyed working on that project, not actually the coding side of things. I hated writing tests before I wrote my code. I hated discussing what OO pattern should be used. I just want to create product.<p>It&#x27;s more and more clear how some programmers just love programming for itself, they have thousands of commits on some open source project, they submit patches to major frameworks, writes things in assembly for fun, a level which I don&#x27;t think I can ever match because I&#x27;d be utterly bored.<p>Right now I&#x27;m happily bootstrapping my project, but I wonder what if I need to take a job again (pay bills etc), I could surely be a freelance developer but would not enjoy it as much as I love bringing to the world my own creations. But doing the latter doesn&#x27;t really guarantee the bills will be paid etc.<p>I&#x27;m happy and sad at the same time.
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RogerL
You like building things. Okay, I'll run with that, understanding that I don't
know you well and will get the specifics wrong. Just trying to kick start your
thinking.

First, there is product design. That is not just 'make this font look pretty',
it is doing things like figuring out sane workflows for your user, watching
them use the product and figuring out elegant solutions to the points where
they get stuck or frustrated. It's conversations with the engineers - your
design might eat batteries, or render poorly on device X, or.... There is
coming up with the product idea, presenting it to investors (who could just be
the VP in the company you work for, there is plenty of chances for creativity
w/o starting your own company). There is product management, project
management. There is the whole personnel side of things. It's not just 'fill
out this form for the yearly review' \- a good manager has a mental model of
their employees, and guides them through constant improvement. She also makes
it possible for that employee to do their job by removing everything
extraneous to that job.

I'm just saying HN can give you a skewed perspective. I have solely invented a
few different products while working for large companies and had my companies
decide to adopt them. The only two things missing was the payoff at the end,
and the stress filled nights (am I going to make payroll? John just bought a
new house). For me that is a great tradeoff. For others, I can't say.

And I'll say this. People like Jony Ive didn't become great by running off and
doing their own things alone. It's a path to do that, to be sure. But he spent
years grinding at a growing company. His story is different than yours, I'm
not trying to say there is an equivalence. But you have to work really, really
hard, for years, for your ideas and designs to be worthy of the world, to be
better than the competition. He became great by years of grinding, and his
work was made sellable by daily, relentless meetings where every decision was
torn apart by other brilliant people (say what you want about Jobs, he knew
how to get great work out of designers).

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jmatthews
"What do you do when you realize you are not a programmer?"

Double down. You enjoy the realization of creation but not the act itself. You
like the view from the top of the mountain but you hate hiking.

Either come to terms with the hiking part, or resign yourself to only seeing
pictures of the mountain top.

The third route is to simplify the workflow required to get to the final
realization of creation but that tends to be a magnitude more difficult than
the typical act of creation.

~~~
thenomad
_" The third route is to simplify the workflow required to get to the final
realization of creation but that tends to be a magnitude more difficult than
the typical act of creation."_

As someone who has been working on just that in a parallel field (animated
filmmaking) for a couple of decades now, can confirm. :)

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phantom_oracle
This isn't a new phenomenon.

There seems to exist a difference between someone who codes for the sake of
coding (perhaps it relaxes the mind?) and someone who codes to make other
things.

As the other guys have mentioned, there's a lot of valuable nuggets of info
you should look into.

I especially liked the part about seeing coding as a means. Code to get
somewhere, and if you find a tool that is better and more convenient than
writing code, use that instead.

There is actually a school of thought (hopefully I'm not alone in this) that
sometimes sees writing code as a matter of no progress. For the last 60 odd
years (or more) people have been "writing code" and it makes you wonder why
this is still so necessary for the "basic" stuff we try to do.

For example: Why do we need to write and re-write code to build the internal
CRUD business applications?

You should also consider taking up another hobby to relax your mind from
coding (especially if you don't enjoy it), otherwise the worry about it will
just fatigue you physically and mentally.

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jebblue
>> discussing what OO pattern should be used

If there are teams sitting around discussing patterns then they aren't focused
on what they should be in the first place. They should be focusing incessantly
on implementing the requirements to meet the needs of the business and
ultimately the customers.

5 decades of code was written and a lot of it still in production before the
GoF (Gang of Four) got together to write down their musings.

Most of the patterns I've studied are so abstract as to be completely useless
in applying to the art of implementing the requirements to meet the needs of
the business and ultimately the customers.

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coppolaemilio
"I hated discussing what OO pattern should be used" "they submit patches to
major frameworks, writes things in assembly for fun" You don't have to do this
kind of things to be a programmer. Of course discussing OO patterns with your
team is a need but submitting patches to major frameworks is on your free
time! If every programmer would do so we wouldn't have so many incomplete open
software. Try not to be chased by the "The Myth of the Genius Programmer" and
keep enjoying creating things.

A google talk:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SARbwvhupQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SARbwvhupQ)

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glimcat
I do programming like I do algebra. It's a tool I use to solve problems.

Mind you, it's a tool I'm very good with, and that I get intrinsic enjoyment
from when using it. But I don't do it 24/7, and I also get intrinsic enjoyment
from woodworking, soldering, cooking...

Some people are invested in getting you to believe a narrative where coders
code, all the time, 80 hours a week even if you don't pay them, like they're
one-dimensional widgets instead of people. If anyone tries to feed you that
line, I'd take a good hard think about why.

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renas
Hey man, take the sad part out, life is too short to get sad, do what you
like, do what makes you happy, don't bother about labels, you might be a
Hacker not a Programmer, keep on having fun :-D

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lgieron
My guess is that people who are making all those commits are often pretty much
indifferent about their jobs (as software engineers) as well.

In general, just because you're passionate about something doesn't mean you'll
particularly enjoy a day job in that field - just ask all the people who were
passionate about doing science, but have quit their phd programs.

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nyan_sandwich
>What do you do when you realize you are not a programmer?

You could start calling yourself a "recovering programmer":

[http://prog21.dadgum.com/56.html](http://prog21.dadgum.com/56.html)

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falconfunction
you browse this site

