
Ask HN: Is it normal to fall out of love with coding? - ganadiniakshay
I started coding when I was 11 years old and I am 26 now so thats about 15 years.<p>All through this I have always enjoyed coding which is why I chose to study CS at college and then have been working as a dev post college. But of recently it has started to feel more monotonous and boring.<p>Last year I started my own company and then got acqui-hired into a startup. I realised that talking to customers and solutioning is more fun than wiriting code. How many of you have felt or feel the same way and what are you doing about it?
======
krig
First of all, I would say it is absolutely normal to fall out of love with
coding, and I wouldn't worry about it! If you're enjoying what you are doing,
that's a good thing.

Unlike the top comment, I don't think this has to be a sign of burning out
(although it can be) - humans are complex beings. The world changes, and we
change as well. What was enjoyable to you 15 years ago may not be as enjoyable
now, and what you enjoy now might not be what you will do for the rest of your
life. At the same time, if you find that you miss coding, you can always
return to it later.

If life pulls you towards a more customer-facing role and you discover that
you like it, that's a best case scenario to me! Go for it.

I've been coding since childhood and I'm 38 now - and I have had periods where
I did other things and enjoyed that as much if not more than coding.
Rediscovering a passion is a great experience in itself, worth having at least
once.

~~~
ganadiniakshay
How easy would you say it is to move back into a developer role if I say
switch into product management role?

I am scared I will be asked a lot about why I am switching back into coding
and why I left it in the first place? I am scared of coming across as
indecisive

~~~
FBT
If you are asked that question this is the sort of answer you give:

"I was given an opportunity to lead a product I was very excited about, and I
took it. It was a great experience, and I learned a lot, but ultimately now
I'm glad to be moving back into a developer role."

If you can truthfully say that, you're conveying not indecision, but rather
showing the flow of your career path. That is something that is expected to
take a few twists like this, and that's even a sign that you're someone with
flexibility and a variety of skills, as opposed to being inflexible and
unwilling to do things that are "outside the box".

~~~
beatgammit
And if you have leadership experience, you could always step back into that
role if the needs of the company change (e.g. project lead leaves the company
and they need someone to fill in until they get a replacement).

My previous company saw project management as a step up, whereas I see it as
just another role. Many engineers make poor project leads, and many project
leads make poor engineers. Unfortunately, our society values "people" jobs
like leadership positions more than technical jobs, so people will see it as a
downgrade (especially those in management).

Ignore that noise and do the thing you like that helps you meet your other
goals (financial, lifestyle, etc).

------
keviv
It's a sign of burning out. I've felt the same way many times during my
career. I started making websites when I was 15 (I'm 33 now) and moved to a
management role. When I wasn't coding for the last few months, I realized I
missed building stuff. I just quit my job this month and now looking for
contract/freelance work.

One thing I realized very late was I needed some kind of hobby outside writing
code and spending time in front of a laptop. Go find a hobby: Travel solo,
read books, learn to play some sort of musical instrument, learn to cook.
Anything helps.

If you like talking to customers, find a developer evangelist job somewhere.
You'll get to talk to customers and developers. Else, think about moving to a
product management role. Start reading books about product management. You can
also fast track your learning by taking some kind of formal education in
product management.

~~~
bshimmin
This is a great reply. I really recommend the learning to cook suggestion -
there are a bunch of parallels with programming (it's creative but in a
process-driven sort of way; there are loads of different styles and
techniques; great sense of accomplishment when you finish something complex;
you can delight others with your creations; gentle learning curve; etc) in
addition to (possibly modest) health benefits and a general sense of de-
stressing.

~~~
pintxo
It's also applied project management, as in hard to hide the fact that some
component of the dish is not yet ready when everyone did show up at the table
already.

------
lordnacho
The thing that makes you happy when coding is purpose.

Even automating your house so that heating comes on before you arrive has a
purpose. Or writing a script to clean up your photos. Or any number of little
coding tasks. You do them and you find them enjoyable because they have
purpose.

Sometimes with work, you lose that. Often it's because coding isn't seen as
anything but a chore that needs to be done towards the business goal. A
necessary annoyance, where the real purpose is something that doesn't require
coding. And that really kills the enjoyment for a lot of devs.

I had a period where I felt like you. I was working in a dying business, other
people weren't supporting it, and it just felt like a death spiral. The only
thing to be done was to change track and do something else.

~~~
therein
I couldn't have expressed it any better. This is it for me, it kills it for me
when "coding isn't seen as anything but a chore that needs to be done towards
the business goal. A necessary annoyance, where the real purpose is something
that doesn't require coding. And that really kills the enjoyment for a lot of
devs".

I began feeling that way at my previous job and left about 2 months ago. Now I
am in my new job at a startup going through hypergrowth and I feel like
development and solutioning is so intertwined and we go back to the drawing
board so often and the dynamics of so fluid that I get to feel a more obvious
sense of purpose.

------
nanook
This whole article is great, but the first 2 paragraphs really resonated with
me: [http://www.loper-os.org/#selection-29.0-44.0](http://www.loper-
os.org/#selection-29.0-44.0)

Here's an excerpt:

 _Sadly, the above scenario is more truth than fiction – for computer
enthusiasts. There is a particularly cruel discrepancy between what a creative
child imagines the trade of a programmer to be like and what it actually is.
When you are a teenager, alone with a (programmable) computer, the universe is
alive with infinite possibilities. You are a god. Master of all you survey.
Then you go to school, major in “Computer Science,” graduate – and off to the
salt mines with you, where you will stitch silk purses out of sow’s ears in
some braindead language, building on the braindead systems created by your
predecessors, for the rest of your working life. There will be little room for
serious, deep creativity. You will be constrained by the will of your master
(whether the proverbial “pointy-haired boss,” or lemming-hordes of fickle
startup customers) and by the limitations of the many poorly-designed systems
you will use once you no longer have an unconstrained choice of task and
medium. To my knowledge, no child grows up “playing doctor” and still believes
as a teenager (or even as a college student) that an actual medical practice
resembles that activity. Likewise, no one has a fully functional toy legal
system to play with as a child, and as a result goes into law. On the other
hand, “adult” programming, seen from afar, is enough like child-programming to
set the computer-enthusiast child up for just this kind of exceptionally cruel
bait-and-switch._

~~~
dasmoth
Fixed link: [http://www.loper-os.org/?p=861](http://www.loper-os.org/?p=861)

------
numinary1
Sometimes what you need is change. I am sixty-five years old. I was a
programmer for fifteen years, started a consulting company, then a software
business. Was acqui-hired. Became VP Product Dev over 27 locations, 1200
developers, hundreds of products, then semi-retired for four years and worked
on digital audio production. Got bored, did another startup, wrote code. Sold
it and became CTO of a product division. Later worked for an investment group,
became CTO for one of their acquisitions for almost ten years. Six years ago
went back to technical work on my "reverse career plan" (junior programmer by
the time I'm 75 ;-) ). Wrote js/react analytic front-end apps, Python back-end
analytics, got into machine learning, co-authored a book about it, got some
big data consulting gigs, learned Hadoop/Spark. Currently hands-on dev for
Spark and ML apps.

For me, changes were the key. Burnout melts away. But you can burn out in any
role. If you have the skills to do tech work, try to keep them alive. Coming
back to hands on tech work is incredibly refreshing. So is leaving it behind
for awhile when you've reached the burn-out point.

~~~
sixdimensional
Thank you for this wisdom. I am a little more than half your age (37), and I
have had a similar path so far, started as IT jack of all trades, then neck
deep in web dev and coding, databases, executive management, product
management/development, customer solutions and then, to my surprise, back to
web dev and coding.

I did this to get back to being hands on, and as a gateway job, and enjoyed
it, but am also now starting to tire of that again.

I can see myself going through a similar cycle that you did. The only thing I
find difficult is explaining it to recruiters when applying to jobs - they
always ask, “why would you bounce around in such a way”!

It looks like perhaps you were able to avoid that problem by starting your own
businesses and then getting acquihired, writing your book, and other pursuits
which moved you back to a “traditional job”?

By the way, I love “junior programmer by 75”. I feel the same way, and not
entirely that it’s a bad thing. Just reality, there is so much to know and
learn.

------
nadam
I am programming since my childhood and I am now 44 years old. For a long time
I thought that I enjoy programming. Later I realized that what I enjoy cannot
be categorized that way. I cannot even easily put it into words, but largely I
enjoy solving hard problems, understanding or modeling things sucessfully. It
happens sometimes during coding. But in a business scenario unfortunatelly it
happens more during designing UX, finding out the business strategy, etc...
and coding itself becomes just a boring means to an end. And I think this
attitude is quite healthy when I work on a product alone. Because even with
this attitude I sometimes geek out and care too much about tech perfection
instead of releasing an MVP sooner. For example now I work on a VR 3D modeler
side project. I have my own engine instead of using something like Unity, and
I care too much about the performance and elegance of my half-edge mesh
representation instead of releasing an MVP extremely early and iterating on UX
as someone who is entirely not obsessed with coding would do...

------
malbs
Here's my two cents

I haven't so much fallen out of love with coding, but fallen out of love of
shiney new things. The last truly "new" thing I jumped on was C#. At the time
C# was first released, I was also playing around with Smalltalk, and that
actually destroyed me. I couldn't understand why people were excited about all
these features in C# as they weren't new.

I became seriously disinterested in new tech, web 2,0, full stack bullshit.

Now I work in Delphi, and I actually love it. All the other guys in my team
hate Delphi and would rather be working in whatever is the latest and
greatest.

The problem with that is that everything just gets reinvented, and stuff that
was old is new again, and the cycle repeats.

That's why I have fallen out of love - I've become a bitter old coder who just
uses (and does) whatever requires the most minimal amount of work

~~~
em-bee
hah, i am making the same experience with smalltalk. but i haven't let it
destroy me. instead i use it to help me focus on learning languages that
actually are different (like haskell).

meanwhile i accept that the languages i use daily like javascript aren't
special because of their features but because of their position in the
programming ecosystem. knowing smalltalk and common lisp also helps me
appreciate the few rare cases where a language is showing a feature that is
uncommon in most other languages. javascripts prototype based objects for
example.

------
gabrielblack
Blacksmith. If it was possible to go back in time, I would be a blacksmith.
This is my conclusion after working several years as consultant. The last
project was horrible, hundreds of thousands of lines in C++ wrote by monkeys
in ten years, layers of layers of crap. When I say layers I'm not speaking
about architectural layers, but geological layers, like the sedimentation that
trap the skeletons of dinosaurs. They introduced control version systems 3
years ago: before they preserved all the revision as comments, into the source
files ! Every ten lines of source code, twenty lines of commented old code
with the description of who, when and why the code was disabled. That was the
time I really desired to die. Honestly, I enjoy myself only with my stuff,
rarely at work.

~~~
em-bee
why not do both? like Niels Provos:
[https://www.wired.com/2013/02/provos/](https://www.wired.com/2013/02/provos/)

~~~
gabrielblack
I'm also a maker, but this guy is just entered in my pantheon of hero. Swords
! With some kind of code can be a solution, also ! :-)

~~~
em-bee
he's taking a different approach when it comes to cutting the cruft in the
code he is working on. :-)

------
cronix
Is it coding in general, or _what_ you've been coding? I've had projects that
I thrived on and couldn't get enough of. I woke up actually excited and
couldn't wait to get to work. It obsessed me. I wouldn't want to take breaks.
I'd work late and time would just pass with me in a zone. What I was doing
excited me. It had utility. It had purpose that _I_ could see. It used new
tech that challenged me. It was hard work, but very rewarding.

I've also had projects that I absolutely hated. I didn't believe in what the
customer was doing, it was the same 'ol thing, etc. Bland. Cookie cutter.
Boring. You get a few of those in a row and you question everything. Luckily,
as I progressed in my career, I can pretty much pick and choose what I do and
can turn down projects without even giving it a second thought, but I had to
get to that point.

You're relatively young still. That's not to be demeaning. We go through
stages of life. You don't just stop growing and keep the same interests. Maybe
you just weren't exposed to a more social role before like you're in now, so
you didn't even know you'd enjoy it. There's nothing wrong with changing
direction, as long as it's a positive move for you. Only you can know that. It
gets harder to change anything about yourself the older you get, so if you're
gonna make a change, I wouldn't wait too long.

------
notacoward
Yes. When you start out, everything is new and the possibilities seem endless.
Whether you're starting your own projects or joining other people's, learning
about each new domain or style of programming is exciting. But once you move
from exploring to building, it gets to be a lot less fun. It's like the
difference between being a tourist in a foreign city vs. getting a job there.
You start to notice the poor quality of almost everything around you. Making
it better is hard work, and only gets harder as you progress further.

Worst of all, once you've gotten a thing to whatever you consider to be a good
state, you're faced with a choice. Moving to a new project/domain might help
to regain that feeling of wonder ... until you realize it has problems too and
you'll be back to digging ditches in a new field. It also means leaving behind
some of your accumulated expertise, which affects both comfort and career
prospects. So many people decide to stick with what they're doing even though
they're no longer passionate about it, and that's draining in its own way.

I don't think there's any one solution. Some people are quite happy endlessly
polishing the same apple. Some people are happy flitting about. Some people
are in between, working primarily in one area but taking periodic excursions
into others. The key, I think, is to recognize _which is true for you_ and
consciously strategize about if/when to change projects to maximize your own
happiness.

~~~
ElFitz
Once heard a VP of engineering at Comcast.

One of the key points was that in engineering not everyone enjoys the same
thing.

Some people like to begin new things, getting from nowhere to somewhere, to
something that's functional enough. The excitement of going where no man has
been before.

Others seem to enjoy taking something that's functional but not enough fully-
fledged to a fully working product. Iterating on it, improving it. And the
comforting knowledge that whatever you are attempting definitely is possible,
doable.

And apparently, there even are a few who seem to enjoy the seemingly endless
grind of the finishing touches. These elusive "last 10%"

People who truly enjoy going through all three, taking a product, a team, a
company, not from 0 to 1 or 1 to 90 but from 0 to 100, do appear to be quite
rare.

~~~
notacoward
Good point. I've seen a few metaphors for this. Commandos, grunts, and MPs.
Explorers, settlers, and caretakers. Scientists, engineers, and archivists. No
matter what metaphor you choose, the last seems to be the least popular and
practically nobody wants to do (or is good at) all three. I've worked three
times with a guy who's a fantastic #3, nicely complementing my own #1/#2
tendencies. It's another good axis for people to think about, and understand
their own preferences. Thanks.

------
yason
Anything you do for work eventually wears out and becomes "just work". That's
why it's called "work".

Hobby coders can escape into the unrestricted world of building stuff without
limits to satisfy their imagination and curiosity. They can also change
hobbies and increase or decrease the amount of time they want to spend on
coding to stay in the sweet zone.

Paid coders can only carve out little, temporary nooks of freedom within the
requirements and demands that come from somewhere that is external. In the
best case they can dictate how things shall be built but the "what" part
generally comes as given: from the boss, from the CTO, from the company
strategy, from the customers if you're an entrepreneur coder.

If it takes 15 years to get bored with coding I can think of a number of
professions where it would only take 1.5 months to get bored. Boredom doesn't
equal all is lost. It's just a sign to work on something else for a while.

I've recovered the excitement of coding several times, sometimes through hobby
coding and something through talking my way into some interesting work
project. But your interest needs to spend some time elsewhere before you can
find it again in coding.

Try testing, interfacing customers, managing, or change jobs. If you can, try
a job that's not in IT to get some perspective. This should be considered an
ongoing process anyway as you will be constantly rethinking your place in life
anyway. The process might lead away from coding or getting back stronger than
ever, but the goal is to find something that makes you tick again. How all
that realises itself in practical work life is mostly secondary.

~~~
sixdimensional
Just to offer a different perspective, there are some cultures I have observed
which treat spending one’s life honing their occupation to perfection as
highly valuable. The Japanese and sword making is one example that springs to
mind.

In that context, I wonder if they too “wear out” or if they find a way/reason
to enjoy it constantly, such as their concept of “ikigai” [1].

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikigai)

~~~
james_s_tayler
Having worked with Japanese software engineers I'd say they more likely feel
they have no ikigai. It's substantially soul crushing compared to sword making
or carpentry.

~~~
sixdimensional
That's a good counter-point to my comment. I have observed the same, I should
have realized it too, as I work with them in my current job. The Japanese also
have the concept of "karōshi" or "death by overwork", as I understand it. So
there are definitely extremes and software engineering it is no exception.

I guess then it falls back to the OP's question, in the sense, is it something
soul crushing about the nature of coding, software engineering etc.?

Having felt the crush myself, I often attribute it to the endless hamster
wheel of always being behind on all the developments because it changes so
fast, and never seeming "good enough" for the particular job or project.
That's a little bit of "imposter syndrome" speaking, but it's also a lot of
reality - job requirements vs. what you know often seeming to be at odds with
one another.

~~~
james_s_tayler
10/10 it's the hamster wheel. That gets everyone.

------
fsloth
I don't know if this helps you deal with your situation but this is how I
would respond if someone asked do I enjoy coding (delivering software is my
profession, bread and butter and I code in my spare time as well now and
then).

Personally I originally thought coding as something wonderfull akin to music
or poetry. Ok, that got me hooked and started. Now as I've matured a bit I see
coding (i.e. the typing part where you manually define the syntax tree with
some specific language) mostly as ... typing. What nowadays gives me the kicks
is the thing that I create by coding and the concepts I can study.

I get no joy in coding, unless I am building something that delivers value.
The value can be end user value, personal learning or just a glint of beauty.

But, no, I would say I enjoy just "coding" anymore. To me it feels like asking
from a literary author do they enjoy typing. It's a part of process of
creating value, but only a part of the process.

When I code in my spare time I don't think I spent the time coding. I think I
spent it investigating an algorithm, or delivering a fun software, or solving
a math puzzle.

------
Insanity
Just like you, I started programming quite young (about 12 when I started) and
last year, when I was 26, I was burned out on it for the first time.

It started with me just getting my job done, but not really finding a lot of
joy in it anymore and I'm sure the quality of what I did went down as well.

A bit later, I stopped doing side-projects and didn't want to read anything
related to it anymore for some time. It was around that time that I realised
it's not my job, but the problem was me burning out (I just ended a stressful
period in my personal life as well due to a family member passing away).

My solution was to just 'allow' myself to _not_ do anything at home for some
time and look for other things to keep myself busy. At first, if I wasn't
doing something for side-projects I'd feel guilty, which was an unhealthy
attitude.

I started reading fiction (instead of non-fiction all the time) and bought a
console for gaming - something I hadn't owned for a decade. Just so I wouldn't
be in front of my computer after work, I also took a holiday for a few weeks.

Eventually I started to miss my side-projects, though it actually took a few
months before I'd really get into them again. Now I'm only really just getting
out of it to be honest, but I'm did rediscover the fun of coding. I'm reading
about it again, but alternate between fiction and non-fiction after each book,
and I'm having fun programming both at home and at work [most days ;)]

So maybe, as other posters said, you are suffering from (the beginning of) a
burn-out. It sucks, but it's not forever.

------
johan_larson
I've been coding for 37 years now, counting what I did in childhood. I can
remember getting a real charge out of doing it. It was a real thrill to be
able to tell the machine what to do and see things happen on the screen.

But I don't feel that thrill any more. I know I can build things; I've done so
many times before. And frankly, figuring out how to fit new functionality into
messy legacy systems isn't much fun. Occasionally, when I manage something
very clever, I feel a glimmer of the old thrill of creation, but that's a rare
thing.

These days, I'd prefer to do higher-level design and leadership work.

~~~
rawfan
The fun thing is to modernize the legacy systems while the're being used in
production. It's challening, rewarding and - in the end - cost-effective.

------
simonbrooke
It hasn't happened to me. I started coding in 1982; I'm still doing it. In the
meantime I've started four startups (none of which succeeded - I'm a much
better geek than I am a businessman - and done a couple of management jobs.
But I find I still prefer writing code (and designing systems) to anything
else, and I don't at all enjoy being responsible for seeing that there's
enough money in the bank to pay other people's wages, so these days I'm just a
contract programmer.

------
jafingi
I felt the same way after CS, and then working a year as software engineer.
And I think it's because of two reasons:

1) I never loved coding (even though I thought so). I loved the process of
finding solutions for problems, and solve them. But coding was not the
deciding factor in this. The research, investigate what should be done,
speaking with customers etc. _This_ I loved. But I did not love coding. All
those problems, debugging of code that does not work etc. I'll compare it to
an architect drawing the buildings, making sure that they live up to the
requirements ("solutioning"). But the architect is not building the building
(coding).

2) What I loved about coding in those 10-15 years I was a hobby-programmer
before CS, I was working on small, fun projects. They were quick to get
working, and then I was quickly moving to the next thing. And I think that is
a problem when working as a professional. You get sucked into large projects
that (seemingly) never ends. And that's not the spirit you had in the
beginning.

Have you tried going to hackathons? I can really recommend it! Having a
weekend where you hack with other hackers and do some coding is a really nice
way of working, and can get you the spirit back!

------
julesallen
So many awesome answers here. I've been through a similar route and have gone
on to do a bunch of roles that had tech at their core but were not coding (so
think marketing for SaaS, etc.).

I still code, I still keep up, but I get to do that because it's fun and
interesting, not because if I don't do it then I can't eat or have a roof over
my head. There's a huge happiness difference in wanting to do it and needing
to do it.

If like simplifying difficult concepts and explaining them to people you might
want to look at a Sales Engineer role. There's a really great YC graduated
bootcamp called Flockjay ([https://flockjay.com/](https://flockjay.com/) and
also read through
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18727360](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18727360)
from a few weeks ago). I've been lucky enough to be accepted for the inaugural
batch of students. The whole process with them and the first classes have been
so much better than I expected. DM me if you've got any questions.

~~~
shath2018
So pumped and proud to have you in class, and I love that we can help support
you. Happy to chat w/ anyone as well re: engineer-to-sales transition. I
started Flockjay for this exact reason.

------
bsvalley
I burnt out on coding a few years ago because of the painful development
process in a professional environment. Dead lines, boring work, bug fixes,
politics, micro management, etc. Here is exactly what I did:

1\. I quit my full time job (I was working at a FAANG), took a 2 month break
in order to travel, work out etc, then I started working on my own projects. I
was coding from 7am to 1am from Monday to Sunday, 6 months in a row. This
doesn't include coding only, I also worked on UX, marketing, legal, anything
involved in building a product from scratch. I enjoyed every minute of it and
learned so much...

2\. This got me into Product Management. I started focusing on product
management only and started bootstrapping the whole thing to iterate on more
ideas. It ended up not working so well so I started applying for PM roles. I
got some opportunities here and there but they weren't as good as I wanted.
Being a Tech lead having to start at the bottom of the PM chain. It felt like
I was over qualified for an entry level role and would not get qualified for a
Senior PM role because of a lack of "PM" experience.

3\. So I went back to coding for a large company as a lead.

4\. Quickly transitioned into Management and moved away from coding again.

There you have it. Coding became a second nature but I can't be as productive
as I used to be in the past. So why would I try to compete against young and
fresh people? I found out I was more valuable in designing systems, optimizing
existing infrastructures, asking questions young engineers don't really think
about because of a lack of experience. The act of coding per-se isn't for me
anymore. That's it. There are many ways to move away from coding without
losing all your valuable years of experience.

------
jakecodes
I've been programming for 20 years, professionally for ~11. I was bored out of
my mind 3 years ago until I found a job at GitLab. Turns out the right people
can make you love your job. The wrong ones will make you lose your mind.

But this can happen with anything. I've been playing piano for 27 years, went
to college to become a concert pianist. I was quite good. Had a bad professor,
realized how very far I was from my dream. How far everyone was. I loved the
crap out of piano. And I graduated with my degree. But I don't have that
nagging desire to be a concert pianist. I think piano is great. Discovered
being successful at coding was 100x easier than being successful at piano. And
a much more promising future. And I am really good at it. And you don't have
to spend hours alone by yourself. You get to talk to and help other people.
And your building things that directly help others.

------
weego
Since moving out of large / enterprise style business and into startup culture
I've definitely felt a big shift in my view of my job and role in this
industry.

I've shifted my perception of myself from being an engineer/programmer to
seeing myself as a product person that happens to use code to express my
goals.

I still obviously expect and demand a high standard of code quality from
myself, but I'd much rather do one thing every day to improve the life of a
customer than wrap myself up in the more esoteric solutions to coding issues.
I don't constantly chase new libraries and frameworks and build tools and I
don't spend time discussing semantics while pair programming. I value
pragmatism above all.

I feel like coding is now 40% ish of my overall skillset and am much better
off for it, which seems to bear out in terms of opportunities that have opened
up since I've made this change.

~~~
badpun
> wrap myself up in the more esoteric solutions to coding issues. I don't
> constantly chase new libraries and frameworks and build tools and I don't
> spend time discussing semantics while pair programming.

You've just described virtually all my colleagues at my last $ENTERPRISE_JOB.
In enterprise jobs, hell is other people - at least it is if you just want to
get the job done.

------
amelius
Maybe you should try:

\- switching from back-end to front-end coding or vice versa?

\- switching from plumbing/glueing libraries to applied algorithms research?

\- switching from basic administrative software to numerical/scientific
computing?

\- trying out a new field like machine learning?

\- try embedded programming or robotics?

\- switch languages, and try something completely different like Haskell?

~~~
ealhad
Have you tried turning it off and on again?

------
ThomasBHickey
I started coding for fun while an undergraduate in the late 60's and spent
much of my time coding until I recently retired, except for one year when I
dedicated my time to directing a project that led to a major system for the
company. Most of that time was as a researcher and I had the freedom to use
whatever language seemed appropriate. The list grew to dozens (anyone remember
Bliss, Metafont, SAIL or the great SIGMA assembler?), finally ending up in
Python within Hadoop. Since retirement I've time with J after spending a year
or two with APL in the 70's.

I find I'm losing the absolute need to code, but I can't think of anything
else that could have offered me the variety, depth and engagement (not to
mention a reasonable salary) that coding has over the last 50 years.

------
cturhan
Doing same thing over and over is boring whether it's coding or not. I develop
and design apps and websites. When I'm fed up with coding, I start designing,
working in colors and pixels. I suggest you to improve a side skill so you can
switch when you get bored/burned out.

------
narag
Coding is still fun to me. But the bureaucracy that surrounds it has grown
very thick. Finding a team where bs to coding ratio is reasonable is a
problem.

------
gargravarr
It's normal to fall out of love with /anything/, IMO. I fell out of love with
playing guitar - I moved to a new city over a year ago, and left my most
expensive guitar in its case. Then last month, I bought a bass guitar (I'd
always wanted one), fell in love with that, and started playing my guitars
again.

I think it's natural to reach a plateau with whatever interests you, where you
understand enough that the original challenge is gone, and/or you meet a new
challenge that you can't overcome. Change something up, come at it from a
different angle and you will probably regain your enthusiasm.

And can I just say, you are the first person I have ever heard say that
'talking to customers' is in any way 'fun'... :)

~~~
ganadiniakshay
The right word would have been challenging. It's challenging to talk to
customers. But challenges are fun and what got me into CS in the first place

------
kadirmalak
Once I too felt like that.

Maybe you're just into something different. That's ok.

But maybe you're like me: For my case, it turned out that I was just bored of
doing what I'd been doing. I changed my direction and left full-stack
development. I started studying machine learning (and lots of other stuff
because of it), bought some in-depth books about programming and started
reading them. I finally understood the importance of Lisps (yes, the weird
syntax has a really good purpose) and started learning Clojure. I'm constantly
trying to improve my -functional- programming skills. It feels ok now, I feel
like I've found a new path to follow, and see the room for improvement.

------
joelbluminator
I think it's normal, things lose their excitement at some point. That's human
nature. You will probably start resenting clients in 10 years. Also - you
yourself will change. You will grow older and might find more value in things
outside career. Or not, who knows. But don't expect to be the same person 10
years from now. Switching stacks, jobs, challenging yourself with harder
roles, taking more responsibility etc are all things that might help. But
unfortunately I don't think anything can bring back the joy I used to feel
when I succeeded in building my first web app. After doing it professionally
for years it loses it's magic.

------
om3n
Sometimes when I"m feeling burnout, I realize I'm actually falling out of love
with coding _for other people_ , and for projects I'm not passionate about.

I recently picked up a side project that I've fallen in love with, and can't
wait to get off work to start working on my passion project.

One difference I've noticed is that I'm not learning new things with my side
project (something I'm traditionally excited about); I'm using what I already
know to build something great.

In this project "coding" isn't the end, it's the means to the end I really
want- and therefore it's not even about the coding, it's about the project.

~~~
muttled
I like the idea of switch to "I've amassed all this knowledge, I should do
something with it."

------
mactavish88
That's really interesting, because I share a similar story. I too started
coding at 11, but became totally disenchanted with it around the age of 23. I
actually went off to start a graphic design/web development company with a
friend, where I ended up doing most of the graphic design. I did some coding
too, but the design work was my primary focus.

Went on to do some business/psychology studies, trying for years to find a way
out of coding that would pay the bills (since that's all anyone would pay me
to do). Eventually I started loathing the coding work. I did it, every day,
but I loathed it. I had to occupy a lot of my after-hours time with reading
and watching interesting videos completely unrelated to software development -
especially focusing on psychology and philosophy.

Then, towards my early 30s, in a matter of weeks I had this sudden change of
heart. No particular reason that I can pinpoint. I just started loving coding
again. I loved being able to make things that made other people's lives better
(especially by way of saving them time so they could get to do the really
interesting things they wanted to do in life).

I have no idea what drives people's inner sense of "interest" (i.e. what
interests people, piques their curiosity and motivates them). It seems pretty
far outside of my own control, for me at least. It seems to take a lot of
wisdom, introspection, radical honesty and internal negotiation to balance my
interests with what genuinely works for me at the time.

------
agentcoops
I took a similar path and, in my experience, it seems to in fact be more
uncommon for someone to maintain a real passion for the day-to-day work of
programming long-term. Which is to say I wouldn't worry, but try to focus on
finding an interesting and enjoyable next move, whatever that may be; just
know that you're young enough to take a few risks and that the job market for
engineers is still such that you won't have difficulty getting back on that
track should you so choose.

Certainly one of the more predictable paths is moving up into engineering
management.

In my case, after experiencing a bit of burnout in my late 20s, I debated
between going back to school for an MBA---another common route in this
scenario---and trying to find a more customer-oriented role within an
interesting technology company. I ended up deciding to join a late-stage
startup in order to help found their Solutions Architecture team, which has
been an absolutely terrific experience. I could imagine going back to an
engineering role in time, but I've enjoyed and learned so much traveling the
world to work with a wide range of companies across industries---just long
enough to understand their business and (hopefully) help resolve their core
difficulties...

Feel free to message me (account @gmail) if you're interested in hearing about
my experience or of course if you're looking for a new role
([https://stripe.com/jobs/positions/solutions-
architect](https://stripe.com/jobs/positions/solutions-architect)).

------
apohn
>Last year I started my own company and then got acqui-hired into a startup. I
realised that talking to customers and solutioning is more fun than wiriting
code. How many of you have felt or feel the same way and what are you doing
about it?

There's a job title for exactly this - Solutions or Sales Engineer.

I've worked in this role in the past and here's a bit caveat. Due to time
pressures your technical skills may (will!) erode and it's very easy to reach
the point where you simply become a talking head for a particular vendor's
architecture and you hand wave around the hard/technical questions. It's
entirely possible to end up in a position where you simply regurgitate the
same architecture slide decks over and over.

You have to decide how technical you want to be and how much time you want to
spend talking and pick roles accordingly. When a technology is new and
probably half-baked (e.g. Hadoop in the early years), you'll be of higher
value by having technical skills. When it's mature and has a GUI, being good
at selling and demos is more important.

One of the nice things about some (not all) Solution/Sales Engineer roles is
that you code enough to enjoy it, but not so much that you find yourself
caught up with all the stuff that's needed when you are a full time developer
building stuff for production.

------
vinayms
First check if its one of these things. (a) Did you always want to start a
company, and has the success of acqui-hire made you feel accomplished and thus
burnt out motivation to code? (b) Is this your first experience with customers
and are you smitten by the novelty of it?

I ask this because I had something relatable but wrt education. For three
years, aged 16 to 18, I was deep into science and maths as I wanted to get
into mechanical engineering at a good college, and these subjects were the
key. I did quite well in the entrance exam and achieved what I aspired for. I
was excited and did really well the first semester. Then, per chance, I
visited the city library, for the first time, and saw a big hall full of books
of all kinds on liberal arts topics. Having been immersed in STEM topics for
so long, I was instantly taken in by its charm. I had never seen anything like
that before and I indulged in it full time. I lost all interest in my
engineering for the next few years, and my grades took a nose dive, but I did
come to my senses and recover eventually. After I joined the software industry
I had occasional flings of this kind with other topics but my past experience
made me more prudent in dealing with them. I take that as a great life lesson.

------
balabaster
I've been programming since I was 8. It has always been to me what gaming
seems to be to a lot of people.

It's always been a means to exercise my brain and solve interesting problems.
An escape from the mundane triviality of life.

I've never been in love with programming just to program. I've always been in
love with that "Oh! I get it!" moment when you finally figure something out.
The next piece of the puzzle. Forever working towards the big boss of the next
level - delivery.

Gaming never held my attention. Programming for me seems to be a never ending
journey of discovery, forever chasing that moment of realization. Programming
is just a means of expressing my solutions in one of a handful of languages I
speak. It just so happens that the languages are technical rather than verbal.

Did you fall out of love with language or did you fall out of love with
solving problems? "Solutioning" as you put it isn't any different than
programming - you just feel like you need to express your solutions in a
different form... a new language. Perhaps it's at a higher level now rather
than being stuck in the details.

------
shath2018
You're definitely not alone. A big part of what drew me to customer-facing
roles in tech was that I found purpose and impact from human connection.

Being able to master technical product, build relationships, solve problems,
and find problems that customers didn't know they had has been a really
rewarding experience. It comes with its own challenges for sure, and a whole
new skillset and language, but the level of impact is huge, and the ability to
code helps you relate complex concepts and learn from users.

There's some great research by Adam Grant that debunks the myth that customer-
facing roles (ie: tech sales) are for non-technical extroverts. In fact, the
most successful tech sales leaders develop technical skills to be thought
leaders in their industries.

Happy to chat more - DM me if you have questions. I'm the founder at Flockjay
(YC W19 - Tech sales education where the school doesn't get paid until you're
hired) - we have amazing engineering talent in our current batch, and past
graduates. We help with the transition from engineering/other backgrounds into
sales.

------
latchkey
Just 5 years ago you were 21. Consider for a moment how your attitude and
emotional intelligence was back then. Think back 10 years when you were 16.

It is likely the case that you've come so far and a lot has changed in your
life in just a relatively short amount of time. Now, move forward 5 or 10
years and imagine the same amount of change.

What I'm trying to say is... it is perfectly normal to change your interests.

------
loandigger
You're probably not falling out of love with coding. You're falling out of
love with having to unremember a lot of the things you've learned and replace
them with new, unfamiliar things that many times, contradict what you already
know.

I started out programming in RPG III on an IBM AS/400, a mini computer. Then
had to unremember a lot of that stuff and move onto fat client-server
architecture and RDBMSs (visual basic, oracle). Then had to unremember a lot
of that stuff and move onto N-tier. (C#, application servers, MS-SQL) Then had
to unremember a lot of that stuff and move onto the internet stacks (HTML, CSS
, XML, Javascript and so many damn frameworks i cant even count at this point)
now, unremembering a lot of that stuff so I can go serverless over at AWS.

try coding in the language/stack you are most comfortable and knowledgable in
(even if it's old and out of date) and see if that doesn't rekindle the
passion. If it doesn't, then its pre-sales tech support for you my friend.

------
kylehotchkiss
I started in 7th grade (13 years old?) and I'm 26 now myself. I enjoy coding
much more than I used to. Just being able to push things out on a regular
basis without getting totally stuck on things makes it all the more enjoyable.

Solving complicated issues at work is satisfying but I still find the most
pleasure in my own projects solving little life issues using the tech stack
I'm most comfortable with (older, less trendy platforms like
Heroku/ExpressJS/Postgres). I love the feeling of an elegantly solved problem
that works in a reliable and efficient way. When I invent the projects I am
working on, I feel the most control to getting to that point since I can
somewhat anticipate my own future feature requests.

What I have been missing lately is having my own home server and tweaking with
the server configs and having more control over how my own projects are
hosted. S3/Cloudfront are incredible but I miss having an apache server at
home doing it for me. One consequence of the laptop age, I guess.

------
petepete
I don't love _coding_. I love building stuff and coding happens to be one way
of building stuff. How much I love building stuff varies from project to
project. Thankfully I'm often in a position to choose which projects to take
on, although sometimes you don't really know until you start.

------
tuckfrump
It can happen. In my early career I was in the non-profit/NGO space, primarily
working with people but then transitioned to a tech role in a couple very
large companies. Very recently I have felt the draw back toward a less tech
focused, more people focused role. Working on that transition at present.

------
dotdi
I concur with other comments that this can be a sign of burn-out. I've been
there as well.

However, I never doubt that I'm in the right profession, but I do know that,
as a human, I'm bound to have ups and downs with any topic that I'm involved
in for longer periods of time just like relationships have ups and downs.

What I chose for myself is to have some activity that is completely different
yet very enjoyable for me _and_ I acknowledge that I do it as a balance and
reward.

In my case, it's playing the guitar. I reward myself with the occasional gear
purchase and generally enjoy studying+playing.

Sometimes, I'm super focused on my job and go slow with music. Other times,
I'm super into music and I'm fine with sinking less effort into my job. The
idea is that I have where to bounce to when I get a bit disenfranchised with
one or the other.

------
code_beers
I’ve never fallen out of love with coding, and I can’t imagine that happening.
At its core, it’s logical problem solving, and that’s what I was born to do.
I’ve DEFINITELY fallen out of love with companies, languages, platforms, etc.
though. Perhaps it’s time for a change of some kind?

------
tanilama
I sympathize part of your sentiment.

I have been coding for like 10 years now. I feel it has become more ....
routine? Coding itself starts becoming a tool for me, a modeling tool that
realizes when I speak to it, like I know soundly winter will freeze the water
into ice, and fire can turn woods into ashes.

But I think that means for me that coding itself is probably not going to
provide more challenges or growth I would expect into next stage of my life.
Coding has to been associated with the problem I am trying to solve. After
all, understanding a problem then dissecting it into solvable pieces is what
is fun. I would try to seek problems at a bigger scale, and maybe that would
bring new perspective of coding to me by facing ever growing complexity.

------
quickthrower2
I think a lot of it is coding is gluing stuff together nowadays. It's like
being a skilled bricklayer and now you've had a taste of being the foreman and
you like it. You still like to make a good wall, but making walls all day gets
boring. I understand.

------
alenmilk
A programmer likes to learn new things all the time and sees the joy in
writing the same code in a new language/framework for the n-th time. A problem
solver sees that it is pointless. You are just doing the same things over and
over again and the shiny new thing is not that special. You must rediscover
the joy of learning new things. Try a new language or a hobby. Try some new
food. Experience new things. Programming requires true grit because the real
work is not that exciting. Coding is just a small part. So you have to accept
that to make great things you have to do a lot of boring work. And that great
ideas are not worth that much without the ability to implement them.

------
qlk1123
Good question, good replies. Thanks to OP and others!

IMHO your situation is actually quite positive because you notice the domain
you enjoy more, which is communicating with people rather than interacting
with computers. Why not just keep moving toward that direction?

I wonder if you have played any games that lack of tactics and don't require
you to learn techniques to master, and you can just farm and farm and farm
before your level or whatever is enough to conquer the final boss. Monotonous,
boring, just like that. If the only reward you get from coding is salary and
nothing else, then you should really consider leaving the comfort zone, which
is actually what you are trying now, and that's good.

------
lazzlazzlazz
Be honest: would you have taken an answer like "no, it is not normal to fall
out of love with coding" seriously? In what theater of life is "permanence"
and "unchanging desire" the norm?

------
svs
Coding is transforming a set of problems into a particular level of
abstraction. Higher levels of abstraction exist (team, business model, etc.)
and it's perfectly fine to find them more fulfilling and interesting as one
goes. I haven't coded in years as a result of being a founder and then CTO of
a largish company. I don't miss it because my head is in a completely
different place but equally absorbed in solving problems. And people are
fascinating - hacking people, groups, teams, customers etc. is much more fuzzy
and presents interesting problems as well.

------
konart
University had killed all passion for conding\software development in me for a
few years. I worked in QA for some time, Oracle products
consulting\integration and only switched back to development 2-3 years later.

------
Nursie
Depends on the coding task.

"Here, make minor tweaks to our established codebase, for stability or for
minor enhancement X, our working practices are set in stone, our coding style
is ancient and you will have no creative control or input"

Yeah, that's boring, however much you love code.

"Here, we've got some ideas, but they needs to be transformed into a product.
You'll be part of a small team making the important decisions and figuring out
the best way to take this forward, technology decisions, working practices etc
are all up for definition and change, have at it"

This is far more interesting.

------
fooker
Coding, by itself is not the fun part. What you are coding should ideally be
fun to you. In my opinion this is a sign that you need to find what you like
to make.

For me it is compilers, for some others it is games, etc.

------
CyberFonic
I have taken multi-year breaks from programming several times (network
engineer, academic, etc). To me it feels great to have a change of pace and
focus. Have been in biz dev role too. After a while that too became boring -
same issues, different faces.

The biggest stumbling block in "solutioning" is when the programmers
responsible for implementing your vision drop the ball and you have to face
the customer and explain the delay, cost over-run, etc. For me that was too
stressful over the long-run.

------
bamboozled
I think what's inevitable is that once you get to a certain level of
proficiency, you begin to focus less on writing "good" code and start thinking
about what you're actually coding for and what the end game will be.

Once you're experienced, it's pretty hard to find an exciting project that can
stoke your fire because you've done it all before. Things just become an
exercise.

How often do you get to work on a totally unsolved problem or world changing
piece of software?

------
EliRivers
It's normal to fall out of love with anything.

That said, sounds like you've simply grown. The actual act of writing the code
_is_ boring. That's not where the fun ever was. Typing on a keyboard? Yeah,
thrill city.

The fun was in thinking and the problem solving; if you no longer get that fun
at the point of typing, then of course the typing doesn't seem fun anymore. If
the kind of problem you like to solve is now at a broader level, embrace it.

------
adityapurwa
Thats exactly what Ive been feeling recently. But then I realized, we evolved,
we grew, thats why our passion might change, and maybe you found a new passion
that feel more exciting that coding.

I just written a piece of mind that might help you notice, whats going on with
your passion. You can read it at
[https://link.medium.com/Td65gAxIkT](https://link.medium.com/Td65gAxIkT)

------
hacknat
Are you excited and jazzed about the customer work? Or do you just prefer to
do that now over coding? If you’re excited and genuinely enjoying what you do
then you should probably allow yourself to just enjoy your new taste(s) and
learn and grow in this new area.

If you are simply spending time in this new area over coding then I do think
it could be a sign of burn out. In which case, you need to recover.

------
karatefylla
Definitely. I did it for +10 years and I would hate to go back to coding for a
living. Now I'm on the "dark side" as a pentester and breaking stuff instead
and I love it.

When you reach the point where you don't want to code outside of work, you've
lost the passion and you're slowing starting to deteriorate as a developer.
It's time to do something else.

~~~
MentallyRetired
Direct, but wise advice. "Deteriorating" is the correct word. Without that
extra mile, you won't be surviving more than 3-5 years in this career field.

------
throwaway2419
When I was a teenager I loved thrash metal. Now I run away from it.

There was a time I liked to travel. Now I prefer spending my holidays at home
or my parent's home, relaxing.

Earlier I used to devour fiction. Now I am more into Non-fiction.

I didn't care about politics, now I do.

Life is just like that. Enjoy what you like now. Cherish the memories of what
you used to in the past. And try to not to worry too much about future.

Good luck.

------
kettunen
Personally I love coding, but I don't do it primarily for a living. I do work
with code daily, but more in the side of quality assurance and DevOps. This I
why I can focus to code various things that are interesting for me (multiple
open source and personal projects) during my free time. I believe this is big
reason for why I still love coding.

------
cageface
I enjoy coding just as much as I did when I started doing it over 30 years
ago. I'm a lot less enthusiastic about the things I and my colleagues are
asked to build though. All the scandals and exploitative uses of technology
that have come to light in the past few years make the field feel much less
fun and innocent.

------
stphn2013
Definitely felt the same way at various stages in my working life. There’s a
huge difference between doing something you enjoy as a hobby and doing it as a
job. Working life beats the enthusiasm out of you, especially when you’re not
always in control of the projects you work on and the software tools you get
to use.

------
Gibbon1
I worked for about a year coding and then switched to hardware/firmware.
Because frankly I wasn't really happy just turning out code day after day.
Code now is just a means to an end.

I have a couple of friends that found they basically hated coding and
switched, one to technical marketing and the other fixes machine tools.

------
Custardian
I enjoy the craft aspect of software development, trading off between various
factors to make maintainable, efficient code.

I've recently joined a project in a language (to be left nameless) with
limited abstraction, and thus limited means to perform these trade offs, with
the result being noisy code.

My interest has consequently waned.

------
kgwxd
I like doing both more than I like either one on it's own. Coding in a bubble
and discussing through mediators are both sub-optimal and they take away the
best part of being a programmer, seeing the user/customer reaction when they
get exactly what they wanted from something you built.

------
mapcars
So you changed, is that normal? Normal or not normal it does not matter, it's
just that life is happening and do you want to explore it or just pass
through? If you want to explore changes are inevitable. If you see changes
it's a good sign, it means something is happening :)

------
vnorilo
If you find a new thing that piques your interest, it's probably good; it's
not like you couldn't get back to coding if and when the stars align. On the
other hand, dwindling passion with nothing to replace it could be a sign of
impending burnout.

------
luizfzs
I've been coding for less time than you. What I've told some people is that I
love coding, but I'd rather code solutions for problems I find interesting,
like side projects, than to code professionally.

------
wolf2600
>> But of recently it has started to feel more monotonous and boring.

You mean work has started to feel like.... work?

Any time you make your hobby into a job, it goes from being play to being work
and will lose a certain aspect of fun.

------
vkaku
No. It is not. The secret to a fulfilling life is to figure out what you like
and then do it. A wise man once remarked: "If you are working hard, you are
not working at all."

------
yaleman
You're 26 and you found something new and interesting to do in the world. This
sounds like being 26 to me...

------
cpx86
One thing I think is worth considering is why you enjoyed coding to begin
with? For some developers it seems to be the craft itself that gives them
enjoyment, but IME they are relatively few, and for most people coding is
simply a means to some other more highly valued end, be it influence, business
impact, money or what not.

For me personally, when I had a lot less experience the attraction was mostly
a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction that I could make a machine do
exactly what I envisioned in my mind. As I accumulated more and more
professional experience, the source of my satisfaction became increasingly
distant from the actual code itself, e.g. analyzing a business need and
identifying a technical solution that met it became more satisfying than
writing the actual code itself. 10+ years down the line now and in my current
role I very rarely write any production code. To the extent that I miss it,
it's probably mostly down to nostalgia. I typically get more satisfaction from
working with strategic technical problems, enabling developers, doing high-
level designs, liaising between tech and other departments, etc.

So TL;DR - yes, it's perfectly normal to find non-coding software development
activities more gratifying :)

------
hguhghuff
It’s normal to have emotions, ups and downs, and a life. Coding is part of
that.

Let it flow.

------
james_s_tayler
What if... programming fell out of love with you?

------
gshock
lol breh at first you will feel like telling your job that you would do it for
free :P

------
hwthrowaway292
tell me more about your company, I'm interested to know what it was about.

