
Ask HN: After almost 30 years the romance is over - What now? - what_happened
For the first time since graduating, I've recently had the possibility to escape the constant mental treadmill that comes with working in most IT departments, and had a look at what life and the world have become in the past 10 or so years. And I've discovered that the main focus of pretty much all of my life fails to excite me anymore - my honeymoon with computers and IT seems to be over. And I'm left asking myself: What now?<p>Let me explain where I'm coming from: Probably like most of you, I've been exposed to computers at an early age. My first conscious memory of using a computer is playing the original Pong on a black and white TV at a friends house when I was 6 or 7. Since then I've been hooked. When my father got an Amstrad CPC when I was 10 or so I could spend hours on end playing on it, playing with it, reading up on how it worked, later on copying code listings from magazines and finally deciding to learn to program it myself. There were to many things and concepts to explore, learn and figure out. From there I moved on to PCs, fiddling with hardware, learning about IRQs, IO Ports, memory management. Moving on the programming side from BASIC to Pascal, C and Assembler.<p>And then discovering Linux and Open Source in the mid 90s. Ever more concepts to explore: How does networking work, what is this crazy web thing and what can be done with it, getting into DNS and mail servers. And at the same time being exposed to new programming languages and paradigms seemingly at every turn: Prolog, Java, Scheme/Lisp, Perl and PHP. And on the system side it seemed like there was a new minor revolution every other week, introducing ever more possibilities: A new kernel, a new samba version, the advent of P2P. And on the cultural side of open source there were lots of competent people freely sharing their ideas, teaching, showing, comparing notes. It was a high energy environment, constantly pushing forward.<p>My main source of fascination came from the exploring of new concepts, and understanding how everything worked and fit together. I stuck to one topic until I understood it, consequently losing interest and moving on to the next bit to explore (pardon the pun).<p>I graduated shortly after 9/11 and the dot com bubble bursting. Just narrowly avoiding personal bankrupcy on my first stunt as a freelancer which I ventured into with my youthful optimism/arrogance, I consciously started shutting out everything distracting me from financial recovery and keeping my respective job.<p>Welcome to the treadmill.<p>Now, nearly 10 years later I'm having my first real look around in a long time and I'm not terribly happy about what I'm seeing. The Open Source revolution seems to be over; very few new things have happened there in these past years. It's all about maturity and stability now, no longer aggressively pushing forward.<p>And it seems that the children of the revolution turned the gold to chrome, scrambling to squeeze a buck out of anything a buck can be squeezed out of. Instead of the free sharing of ideas I grew up with, I'm encountering more and more the attitude of a guarded sharing of general topics, but the real knowledge and experience seems to be held back because it has to be regarded as a personal asset that might be used to turn a profit somewhere.<p>Todays big topics leave me pretty much unenthused. As a not particularly social person I fail to be fascinated by the social web. Mobile internet will be the big thing for the next few years, but for whatever reason I fail to be fascinated by gadgets that are the offspring of cell phones and my pentium from way back, reliving the DOS shareware scene through a centralized distributor. Server side scaling is all about variations on few well known themes: Add another cache/key-value store/nosql store, insert another abstraction layer, data and workload decentralization.<p>So I'm in a maze of twisty passages, all alike. And they all seem familiar. Is this how deep the rabbit hole goes? Did I really reach the end? Or did I just fall out of the loop at some point in the past few years and need a pointer in the right direction? Did I just get old and not notice it until now?<p>I'm sure some of you have experienced something similar. How did you move on? Did you manage to rekindle the flame somehow? What are your suggestions as to where I should go to from here and to ideally find new worlds to discover and explore?
======
edw519
I've been doing this for 30 years and I'm more jazzed than ever.

Wanna know the biggest difference between you and me? I'm pulled. You're
pushed. Let me explain...

I love building stuff. Nothing gives me a bigger rush than getting something
working the first time (well almost nothing). But I couldn't care less about
the technology. If an abacus, two tin cans on a string, or some BASIC code on
a Kaypro II did the job, then that's what I'd use.

What I really care about is how my software is used. And who uses it. There's
an endless stream of people who need stuff and an endless stream of problems
to solve. For individuals, groups, and businesses. When I encounter a new
problem to work on, I use whatever I can apply in my tool box. Sure, I have to
upgrade that tool box every so often because I need more to solve my problems,
not because I love the toys so much.

You sound like the opposite. You love the toys and look for places to use
them.

My suggestion: Take a break from the technology and put yourself in more
situations where people can share their problems. This will give real human
meaning to the technology. I bet you'll be chomping at the bit to build
something for someone in no time. For me, being pulled by a demand motivates
much better than being pushed by a supply. Maybe it can be for you too.

~~~
sendos
_[edw519] What I really care about is how my software is used. And who uses
it_

 _[heliodorj] The main motivator and source of satisfaction for software
developers is the human aspect, not the technology itself. Is your product
making a difference in someone's life?_

I think these two statements show a profound misunderstanding of what
motivates a lot (if not most) hackers.

What gets a lot of people into this field in the first place, and is a source
of major satisfaction, is, "wow, I can make it do _this_!"

A true hacker will be say things like:

* "I just turned my toaster oven into a TV remote control!"

* "I just made fully-functional web browser using COBOL!"

No one will ever use the above creations, but the satisfaction is still there
for person who accomplished them.

I don't think, at least in the early stages, people who go into this field get
excited by who or how many people end up using what they did. It's the pure
thrill of getting things done that were not possible before that excites these
people.

Of course, there is a second source of major satisfaction, which is to see
your creation being used by many other people. This is huge, but I think is a
distinct source of satisfaction than the one I mentioned above.

The third distinct source of satisfaction is, of course, making a ton of money
from your creation.

I don't know about young programmers these days, but, when I was programming
my first Amstrad CPC, I was being motivated mostly by the first type of
satisfaction: getting this box to do what I wanted it to. The thought of my
programs being used by others and making money from them didn't really cross
my mind at the time.

Maybe what the author of the OP is starting to miss is the pure thrill of
making something new, something exciting. Building another social networking
website, even if it gets lots of users, simply isn't technically challenging
or exciting (it is extremely challenging from other points of view, but you
won't be breaking any new technical ground)

I think the software industry may be going through what others went through
before it:

* Airplanes: In the beginning only "hackers" where in on it, trying to make planes get off the ground. In a few decades, most of the major advances had been made, and new people entering the field just wanted to find ways to use the existing technology to make money (e.g. Frequent flyer miles)

* Telephones: In the beginning, there were lots of technical problems with getting great phone quality over landlines. In a few decades, most technical problems were solved, and people came in to use the existing technology to make money (e.g. "Call 555-1234 to hear your horoscope for $3/min")

Maybe something like this is happening with computers today. Most of the major
non-AI problems are solved, and now people are coming into the field to use
existing technology to make money (e.g. Facebook, Yelp, Groupon, Youtube, etc)

If and when we get to some decent level of AI, the bar will be raised and a
whole new set of problems will be attacked. So, AI-type problems (speaker-
independent and accent-independent voice recognition, image search, natural
language search, translation between languages, etc) seem like a great area to
be in for someone who gets a thrill from making something totally new.
Unfortunately, the whole AI field seems a bit stagnant at the moment. It will
take someone with a totally new take on how to do things to take AI to the
next level.

~~~
sdrinf
Innocent-looking question from an ex-AI researcher:

Take a moment, and disregard your technological know-how (the fact that you
think you know how it works), and consider Google strictly as a black-box.

Which functionalities of a strong AI have they not delivered (or are not well
within the way to be delivering) so far?

~~~
sendos
If we go by the following definition of Strong AI (from Wikipedia)

 _Strong AI is artificial intelligence that matches or exceeds human
intelligence — the intelligence of a machine that can successfully perform any
intellectual task that a human being can_

then there are lots of things that Google can't do that many human beings can.
For example, when you do an image search, the results are sometimes laughable,
and that's because Google doesn't understand image content and just reports
results based on the tags on the image or based on surrounding text. Lots of
human beings would have understood the search query well enough to not return
the results Google returned in many cases. So, Strong AI it ain't

~~~
farmerbuzz
Not to mention speech to text on Google Voice (usually laughable results) and
translation (works a bit better, but breaks down hilariously e.g.
[http://groups.google.com/group/shibboleth-
users/browse_threa...](http://groups.google.com/group/shibboleth-
users/browse_thread/thread/123bd2d82822a3a7?pli=1) ).

------
sdrinf
Welcome to the law of Diminishing returns. Your choices fundamentally boils
down to the following:

-Take the blue pill. Stay in wonderland. Pick a technology, any technology. Drive yourself into it deeper. The rabbit hole goes much, much further, than you can imagine.

-Take the red pill, and wake up: the rabbit hole goes the other way, too. On first basis, you have the ever-exploding number of scientific disciplines ( [http://www.turtlshel.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/43056172...](http://www.turtlshel.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/430561725_4eb7bc5d8a_o.jpg) ). Even further, society isn't merely a collection of engineers, and scientist: other people have all kind of different jobs.

Furthermore, they are equally convinced, that their field of choice was the
right one; and from their own perspective each one of them was right.

Since you're HN, you might have a particular interest towards this field we
call "business". Now, this is not what people around you -who are called
"managers" btw- do. A good working definition for engineers is: Business is
the ability to actualize a job that needs to be done, on which you're
retroactively hired (or fired) by society as a whole. Or, as PG put it: doing
stuff what people wants.

Regardless of how you choose, a good partition of it is going to be soul-
searching. There are 2 pieces of media I'd strongly recommend for that:

-Randy Pausch Last Lecture [ <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo>], and

-wishcraft, which is a short book, available freely from <http://wishcraft.com/>.

On an ending note, I feel for you. Every time I've been down to this alley, I
always always wished I'd have done it earlier. If anything, you should know
this: the direction of your life does not boil down to singular moments, as
you've described in your initial post. It's something that must must must be
constantly evaluated, and course-corrected based on any new piece of life-data
you happen to stumble across. And it's never to late to change things.

~~~
glenra
I'd toss in another piece of media, Elizabeth Gilbert's short (20-minute) TED
talk on creativity and "genius":

<http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html>

(I tend to re-watch that one whenever I feel like I'm stuck in a creative rut,
have run out of ideas, or just aren't talented enough to achieve my current
artistic goals.)

Also useful advice: Find ways to hang out with a peer group. Try browsing
meetup.com in your areas of interest.

------
india
I think the "loop" is indeed moving on. The last real mini-revolution this
side of the line probably were torrents. The whole social web is just wrong.
It's centralized. It's not the web - it is a corruption of it. It is like the
great minds who could design truly de-centralized, robust, reliable and truly
social structures have all just vanished. There are so many difficult and
important problems around but no one wants to solve them just because there is
a huge ??? before the profit step. It is indeed a bit sad.

But there is some real fascinating stuff happening in hardware. We have
freaking humanoid robots and private rockets. And nothing excites me more
about the future than 3d printers. And there is a real and true to the soul
open source like effort going on in there. Reprap, makerbot and that awesome
75k inr 3d printer from china... printers that can print themselves! Hardware
specs that are shared and re-shared. Ideas and insights shared with gay
abandon. No major patent threats anywhere in sight so far. It is the free
world.

~~~
what_happened
This sounds like something to look into. Are there any resources in particular
that you can recommend?

~~~
india
Sure. [2] talks about reprap's philosophy and is a good a place as any to
start. Not many are talking about this yet but this is the new revolution. It
has to be!

[1] <http://reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page>

[2] <http://vimeo.com/5202148>

[3] <http://www.makerbot.com/>

[4] [http://www.boingboing.net/2010/09/06/cheap-portable-
perso.ht...](http://www.boingboing.net/2010/09/06/cheap-portable-perso.html)

[5]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_printing#Comparison_of_3D_pr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_printing#Comparison_of_3D_printers)

[6] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=350708>

[7] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1061260>

[8] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=760466>

------
zedshaw
I actually probably have nearly the same history as you. Graduated about the
same time as you. Been fascinated with computing as long as you. And just
about as fed up with the current state of things as you.

I think the difference between us is I've got some notoriety so I'm looking to
at least try to tear down the current situation before I get out of here. I
figure might as well give it a shot, and if it doesn't work out I'm smart
enough to change careers.

So I say, if you're not interested in it anymore, then try not doing it for a
while and do whatever else you want. Even if this 2nd career is a total
failure you at least tried.

~~~
what_happened
The hard part here, of course, is coming up with something else to do. While
basically sound advise, after years of a wakeup-work-eat-bed cycle while
worrying about the negative content of the bank account, thinking around a
corner is hard, let alone thinking outside the box. But I'll try not to force
the issue and see what comes up.

~~~
jcroberts
> thinking around a corner is hard, let alone thinking outside the box.

Well, thinking around a corner means you're already on the outside of the box.
;) Considering you posted this to HN, you're already thinking around corners.
I think you should give yourself (and HN) a bit more credit.

Though you never used the term "bored," you more or less described yourself as
being bored and your situation as being boring. I'd like to share a wonderful
piece of wisdom given to me by my friend, Reginia Riley.

Fascination is a choice. When you choose to be fascinated, you are
fascinating. When you choose to be bored, you are boring. In essence, when you
say "I'm bored," you are actually saying, "I'm boring." At the same time,
fascination is the source of motivation.

If you find yourself being often bored, the above is tough to accept. Some
even find it insulting. But it is true and the sooner you accept it, the
sooner you'll no longer be both bored and boring. On the other hand,
fascination with something tends to be contagious for others and tends to lead
to fascination with other things.

If you've done half the things you've claimed, then you are motivated by
challenge. You were fascinated by the challenge of figuring out the technical
bits (pun intended). Sure, far too much of HN is "money this" and "money that"
for startup-du-jour. Sure, money is a way to keep score for businesses, but
few ever realize their real driving force is the _challenge_ of
entrepreneurship. In this regard, the fascination with the challenge of
technology is extremely similar to the fascination with the challenge of
entrepreneurship. The root cause is the same.

In technology alone there are countless challenges just waiting for you to
choose to be fascinated by them, but it doesn't end with just tech; countless
challenges and fascinations exist everywhere.

Your own curiosity and fascination are priceless. When you decided to give
them up, what were you given in exchange for something so priceless?

Yes, I know this post may strike too close to home. I know it might hurt. I
know you might resent me for it, well, at least at first. It was like that for
me many decades ago when I needed to learn this lesson. None the less, by
sharing what I learned, I do have your best interest at heart. You're asking
to treat the symptoms, but I decided to treat the cause.

------
noonespecial
I'm younger than you by a little (or about the same) I think, and I'm not
overly impressed with "social media" either. It feels like we've just been
renaming the basic things computers can do with fad names since the turn of
the century.

It feels like the endless potential has been wasted. All of the amazing things
we could have done with computers and we used them for like-buttons and
lolcats. Wow great, another app to tell people who don't care where I am and
what I'm doing at _this very moment_. I'll try to contain my excitement.

Maybe its just classic burnout or a more troubling creeping pessimism that
affects more than just me.

What gives me hope is that these things seem to happen in fits and spurts and
the biggest jumps seem to start in the down times and recessions. When they
arrive they are fast and unexpected and usually made from bits of the ordinary
that had seemed boring and innocuous until put together just right.

It seems like we're about due. I don't know if it will come from open source
hardware, desktop manufacturing, DIY biohacking or something I haven't even
considered, but I expect it, and soon.

~~~
jtolle
Hey, someone has to stick up for the lolcats!

I'm only half joking when I tell people that computers were invented so that
my wife and her family and I can sit around drinking margaritas and watching
Jan Terri videos on YouTube...

------
andymoe
"I've recently had the possibility to escape the constant mental treadmill
that comes with working in most _IT departments_ "

You wrote some pretty prose but you did not really tell us what you know or
what you have been really doing with your life for the last ten years.

When someone says "IT Department" I think large (or small) corporation
supporting a group of people who actually bring in the money. The key reason
these places are so soul crushing is that many times management does not know
how to use them effectively to help the bottom line by making smart technology
choices. You are just a cost center.

The other reason they are soul crushing is that 2/3rd's of your colleagues are
probably all kinds of incompetent and should have been fired or never hired in
the first place.

In any case the trick is to get out of there as quickly as possible. (It took
me 10 years too and I'm still not recovered career wise or personally) Get
yourself employed by a technology company working on their core products. All
the sudden you are not supporting anyone (except maybe your customers.) and
you may find it a much more pleasant experience.

I would also suggest making friends with some people more successful than
yourself and really try and learn from them how to manage you finances
correctly. It's something that many families just don't teach.

Finally I'd recommend reading "The wealthy Barber"[1] to get an idea of what a
healthy financial situation and practices might look like.

[1] <http://www.amazon.com/Wealthy-Barber-Updated-3rd-Commonsense>

------
metamemetics
> _the constant mental treadmill that comes with working in most IT
> department_

I think: > _my honeymoon with computers and IT seems to be over_

should read: > _my honeymoon with IT seems to be over_

Be careful not to confound a distaste with IT with a distaste for computing in
general. Thinking about negatives in a global terms rather than a specific
terms is one the key depressive thought patterns.

Thinking about a negative as a global\general state is highly destructive: I
did bad on this test, because I suck at studying\am dumb. The end result is
learned helplessness.

Thinking about a negative as a specific event allows you to view problems as
solvable: I did bad on this test, but it was because I didn't study or prepare
enough in this specific incident. The end result is positive, you will study
more in the future.

From your post it is clear you are getting stuck in the former thought
pattern, I wish you the best of luck getting out of it.

------
MK5
I was born in China and all my first memory is about little me saying "I'm
going to join the red army and become a scientist and save the world". The
world, which is China. And then, I've moved to Europe in the early 90s. I've
discovered something new: my dad's mac. First, I was only playing Go and dark
castle on it but then, I've started asking myself how to make my own games. My
parents are all engineers and they told me a lil' about Dos, FreeBSD but also
Linux. I've received my first PC at 11 and the first thing I did is playing
Fallout. The second thing I did is using a hex-editor to crack the save to get
the best weapons :p And I've also received Internet at home! Life changing!
I've actually met people "like me". Very smart people indeed. And I've learnt
much more on the web than at school and I felt I was apart of another world.
IRC was more real than IRL. And thanks to the Internet, I've read a lot of
tutorials and ABCs so I started writing my first lines in C/C+ and ASM at 12
and never stopped... well, I've actually stopped. One day, at 21, I discovered
I wanted to do something else. I mean, I still like technology in general but
I've actually stopped reading hackers blogs, cookbooks and I stopped trying
every crackme challenge over the web. I was fed up with all of these things. I
felt I was just a rebellious kid trying to prove to himself how smart he was.
So I stopped. And so I've asked myself exactly this question same question:
what now?

Well, "now", after 3-4 years, I'm doing a business degree. I've also met the
girl I love. I've also played in a French TV series. Oh, yeah, I've also been
all around the world. Actually, I did many things. Much more than expected. I
thought, when I stopped living before my PC, that I'd maybe find a new "hobby"
and just farm it like I've farmed C/C+. Nop, nothing about farming just "one"
thing but doing, sometimes casually, many, many different things.

But guess what? I've started a Web-startup (elive.pro)! Just like that.
Because I can. And because I still like technology. And because if I was fed
up with the hackers' environment 4 years ago, now, it's pretty different for
me: I don't know much about the so-called Web 2.0 and I want to learn, to do
something. And meet new people. Smart people.

You know what? It's all about love. Technology is for many of us, our first
and our real love. You will rekindle the flame. But sometimes, even if you
really love something or someone, you have to let it or her/him alone.

So, let the technology stuffs alone. Try new things and one day, you'll
automatically come back to your first love. Maybe not as a developer but
definitely come back somehow.

~~~
nitrogen
+1 for patching save games :)

I hex-edited my Commander Keen save games to get effectively unlimited lives
and ammo. I'm glad to see at least one other person was motivated by the same
concept.

------
CRASCH
I have a very similar background. Scary similar. I'm older though. I've had
similar feelings at various times. Is this it? Really? Lame...

I used to get excited about new technology and it did seem that something cool
and amazing would come out all the time. Just an endless stream of wow. I just
can't get hyped up about some mash up, retread, or social widget. I don't
think I've changed I think the industry has.

That isn't really a bad thing though. It is an opportunity. I used to wait in
anticipation for someone to come to market with a product or solution I
foresaw. That rarely happens now with market driven development. That is the
opportunity. Don't languish that the amazement isn't there. Make it. You have
the skills. I'm sure you see the deficiencies. The industry is now so stagnant
in true innovation, this gives us, the technical entrepreneurs the opportunity
to innovate.

How to rekindle the flame? I don't know if this will work for you. This is
what I do. I buy a new toy and hack on it. A computer or phone. I find a new
programming language or something like pfsense (router) and play with it. Find
some software that sucks and build one that doesn't. Scratch an itch.

What itch would I scratch right now if I wasn't busy. I'd build a soft bios
driver that would emulate a CD/DVD drive. This would load an emulated CD/DVD
driver into a PC bios just like a SAS card loads its driver into the bios.
This would allow you to select multiple iso images from a usb drive and then
boot to that emulated CD/DVD. Right now you can't really do that.

------
aufreak3
This is kind of a useful sign actually. When things look bleak like this, it
usually means you're on the verge of something radically new ... and that's
exciting to think about. Its like the guy who said "lets close the patent
office 'cos everything that can be invented has already been invented."

This might be useful too -

A long time ago, someone on HN wrote about a similar give up point he came to
in his life (sorry can't locate that post, but I recall it quite well). He
decided to take a year off the industry - completely cut off. Just doing stuff
like rock climbing, traveling, etc. .. until one day he had an epiphany that
he'd taken up software in the first place because he loved it. He then got
back in, full of enthusiasm.

So looks like taking a total break for a while can make things clear.

~~~
c23gooey
Ive done something similar in my life.

I took a year off from working the web and did things like courier work, bush
regeneration and bus driving.

After a couple of months in each of these jobs i would get mentally restless
and i soon discovered that the reason that i was working in the web world is
because it is interesting and i am good at it.

Sounds like the OP took a step back to see all the other amazing possibilities
in life, but didnt step back long enough to appreciate his own position.

------
jhuckestein
I'm nearly a decade younger than you, so take this for what it's worth.

You said when you were young, you were fascinated by computers and learned
everything about them. Try to imagine again what it is like to be young. What
would fascinate you if you were growing up right now? Maybe it's not even
computers. Maybe this really is the end of that rabbit hole for you, who
knows. Is that such a bad thing?

Try getting out of your comfort zone, too. Join a sports club, go on a long
trip, meet new people, pick up a hobby. You may feel that way, put you're not
stuck by any means. You can do whatever you want now. How liberating! You can
reevaluate what you want from life and set sails once again.

I've been in software since I can remember. I'm super enthused by the
opportunities I see right now. Yet, I hope that one day I will get to do
something entirely different. I think life is too precious to do just one
thing.

Oh, and another thing: If you don't like the social web, skip right to the
object web. Why can people understand that tables are MADE of wood, HAVE four
legs, are MADE in China, which IS a Country REPRESENTED by a Flag that LOOKS
red, which IS a color that IS ... and so on ... and computers can't understand
that? How can we teach them? That's my current favorite fad ;)

------
erikstarck
I think you have to remember that the future is already here but not evenly
distributed. What you perceive as boring other people may view upon as almost
magic. There are so many markets left to disrupt and improve with technology.
There are so many problems yet to be solved, so many people yet to be helped.

Maybe if you apply your knowledge of computers to new domains the spark will
once again be there.

------
mahmud
Empower the non-technicals. Help students and researchers in medicine, law,
humanities, communication and the arts make better use of technology.

There are boatloads of abandonware tools and libraries that real people depend
on for their research, work and livelihood. I am talking about things as
varied as sensor data capture software running on MS-DOS, to high-schools that
have one PC for every 100 students. There are opportunities everywhere, look
around and give someone light.

------
cdavid
Open source still makes a big difference, especially in 3rd world country. I
went once to an open source conference in India, it really opened my eyes to a
whole new way of looking at the movement. Maybe that's what you may want to
look at: software which really makes a difference today for many people.

~~~
luckystrike
_it really opened my eyes to a whole new way of looking at the movement_

Interesting. Can you share more details on the new perspective you got from
being there?

~~~
cdavid
Most projects I have been involved with were related to my PhD at that time,
numerical computing kind of stuff in python. Going to the conferences in
Europe or the US, it is already quite exciting because you see a lot of
people, in academics and otherwise, using the softwares you contributed to.
You make some tasks more enjoyable because the tools are more powerful, etc...

Now, in India, the dynamics are really different. You don't just do something
that make people life simpler. You really enable people to do things they may
not have been able to before. When the de-facto standard software costs one
year of a post doc in India, having open source alternatives do make a
difference.

~~~
luckystrike
Thanks. Always good to learn new things. I'm an Indian but wasn't aware of
this particular advantage OSS is bringing out here. (May be because I have
never been involved in a Masters/PhD program.)

~~~
cdavid
Fossee (<http://fossee.in/>) was one of the association which helped
organizing the conference, and you may find more information on their website
if you are interested.

------
fauigerzigerk
You know what I find pretty amazing is how much data is out there in the
public nowadays. It wasn't like that 10 years ago. For a very long time AI has
suffered from lack of automatically extractable knowledge about the world,
lack of sources from which to learn, lack of feedback loops. And now,
suddenly, we have so many sensors everywhere and we have so much public
expression of knowledge, intent and action.

Shouldn't we be able to build machines that are much more capable of
interpreting every day goings than we used to be? There is still so much
boring routine work that people do. I think the next revolution in computing
is imminent and I think the very recent abundance of data from which to learn
will be what makes it happen.

The way I (as a robot) look at social networks is as a source of interactions
from which to learn about humans.

------
fbcocq
Well, computers and the web are just tools, like a hammer. Due to its
fascination and novelty when we were young it's easy to forget that while
we're here discussing the intricacies of building a better hammer, others are
out there erecting cathedrals with it. Maybe take a look around and see what
you can actually do with it, learn something not related to IT and see if you
can push it forward by improving the IT side of it.

------
xentronium
There are several big things you didn't mention, AI and neural networks, for
example. You could also try robotics and engineering stuff (watching how a
piece of silicon and metal becomes alive is priceless).

~~~
kls
This is good advice, the problem is that you are suffering burn out. !0 years
sounds about right. You need to get back to your roots and one way I recommend
to do it, is to get into embedded. It gets you back into a small reward loop
where little things net positive feedback. The other thing that I recommend to
people is get closer to a research discipline. If you are really that burnt
out, try applying your trade to a secondary science that you are interested
in, chemistry, Bio-Engineering, astronomy something like that. There are a lot
of cool projects that need help with code.

~~~
gaustin
How do you suggest getting started with embedded programming?

~~~
svec
Jack Ganssle is an embedded guru and a great writer, check out everything he's
written - books and online.

Start here: <http://www.ganssle.com/startinges.htm> ("How to become an
embedded geek")

Get yourself a simple all-in-one hardware/firmware environment, like the one
my company (Silicon Labs) makes: Look for the "MCUniversity Kit", it's $55,
here: <http://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/Pages/MCUniversity.aspx>

Or check out [http://hackaday.com/2010/08/11/how-to-launchpad-
programming-...](http://hackaday.com/2010/08/11/how-to-launchpad-programming-
with-linux/) for info about Launchpad, a cheaper, similar solution from TI.

I've actually used Silicon Labs' MCU University kit, and I highly recommend
it. I don't get any money directly from it, but Silicon Labs does pay my
salary.

------
borneogamer
Strangely enough, this happened to me 4 years ago. I think they called it
middle age crisis? Anyways, what I did then was switched from being in IT
field to aquaculture. I built a fish farm, raised some fish, learn all about
aquaculture, built a profitable little business.

And yet... something _techies_ deep inside me keeps stirring. The need to
create something shiny and new and the feeling I get when I say "I made this"
is just indescribable. Thats why early this year I sold my fish farm and
started an IT company... again. :P

~~~
chopsueyar
Can you provide more details about your fish farm? What type of fish? Size of
tanks? Time to "harvest"?

------
richardw
I wouldn't worry about it too much. Accept that you need a change for now and
re-look at it every so often. I've been coding since '84. I've found myself
very jaded by computers a number of times in the past and I'm definitely not
chasing every technology thread I could be. But hey, sometimes it comes back
and you see the same stuff in a new light, or you discover areas that really
do interest you, or you combine what you know with a new domain.

Don't force it. Let it go until you enjoy it again.

~~~
chopsueyar
Can you provide details of your personal experiences in this regard? (Very
curious, not trying to pry.)

~~~
richardw
Hard to answer. I went through a phase while working for others where I just
wasn't coding at home anymore. I did the time at work, but my main interests
were elsewhere.

A few things that worked for me:

\- Changing to a developer-focused company, where developers aspired to be
craftsmen.

\- Creating my own app. I can pour my heart into one part of it, no deadlines
unless I want them and I learn a million things outside of the code.

\- Going to b-school. Lots of ideas/new people, new domains.

\- Contracting instead of being full-time. I like the time balance more.

Whatever it was, I rediscovered why I like developing.

------
Tichy
"The Open Source revolution seems to be over"

<http://github.com>

~~~
vorg
> The Open Source revolution seems to be over; [...] And it seems that the
> children of the revolution turned the gold to chrome, scrambling to squeeze
> a buck out of anything a buck can be squeezed out of. Instead of the free
> sharing of ideas I grew up with, I'm encountering more and more the attitude
> of a guarded sharing of general topics, but the real knowledge and
> experience seems to be held back because it has to be regarded as a personal
> asset that might be used to turn a profit somewhere.

Too true. Some of the newer "open source" projects seem to be run by suits
posing as geeks, where the source is open, eventually, but nothing else.

~~~
jbjohns
"everything" isn't going to be free until _everything_ is free. It's not fair
to expect people to just freely give away software for nothing in return when
the rest of society doesn't work like that. People say "oh but you can just
use the credibility of your free software to get a higher paying job". Great,
so I'm back in a cubicle. I'd rather be writing software I'm interested in.

There was actually nothing new learned in free software from a capitalist
point of view. "Loss leader", thin and thick margins, it's all been covered
before.

------
rue
Living in a capitalist world is frustrating but not redeemable in the near
future.

What do you do, other than computers? A "hobby" may seem like a lame
suggestion but in reality, hobbies is all we have apart from people (and those
are harder to come by).

------
chair6
Thought about breaking things instead of making things? The security industry
is an interesting place to be at the moment.. researchers continue to push the
envelope and come up with new ways to abuse / bypass 'the system' and - if you
dive deep enough, some significant technical and meatspace challenges to deal
with. Privacy, or lack of, is increasingly an issue with various specific
challenges to be addressed. Consulting adds a twist too; I definitely get a
kick out of helping people / organizations realize what process & technology
vulnerabilities they have and determining the best way to address them.

And I find that snowboarding, mountain biking, hiking, and running help avoid
feelings of drudgery.. do you have hobbies that get you away from a computer
screen for a chunk of time every day?

------
prawn
Buy a round-the-world airfare and take a holiday.

------
lien
If you had to re-create social media for non-social people, what would it be?
I'm a big believer that social media is still in its infancy, with huge
innovations yet to happen. let's take an anti-social topic, say, coding. if i
were to create social media for this, I would probably create a site where
programmers learn from each other. can you assign points to a person based on
"likes" and "tags" and promote them to an expert of a specific topics? can you
count how many facebook questions they've answered? just a thought, but if you
don't like something, maybe it's an opportunity to mold it to your own vision!

~~~
chopsueyar
You seem a bit obsessed with "socializing." Until it becomes required by law,
there will always be a percentage of persons not wanting/willing to
participate.

If only I could make everyone attend church...

~~~
lien
Thanks, I'd rather be the one who's obsessed than being the one who doesn't
care. FYI. social media is not synonymous to socializing.

------
dschobel
Instead of being motivated only by technology have you considered trying to
create a product or starting a company? (this is HN after all).

Lots of people using (and maybe even liking) something you built can be pretty
compelling.

~~~
what_happened
Starting a company: Yes, I tried that during my freelancing time. The plan was
to freelance on the side to keep myself afloat until the company could carry
itself. Except things didn't work out: not only did the company not find any
clients, as a freelancer I didn't get enough contracts to actually keep myself
afloat. The timing of me trying that was incredibly stupid in retrospect;
2002/3 would have to be the worst years in the past decade to try something
like that.

The main thing I did learn from that entire episode is that I suck at
marketing/selling. While trying again is not completely off the table, I would
definitely only try it again with a co-founder who is a good sales person.

~~~
dschobel
Or go to a small company where you actually can see people using your work.

As others have suggested, instead of being driven by tools/technology maybe
focussing on the product can be satisfying.

------
lsc
first, where are you?

I have found that moving to the valley can be very inspiring... I know this
isn't a social hobby, and I myself am an introvert (though maybe not quite as
introverted as many of the better people I know.) living in a place where
there are other people excited about this work can change your perspective a
lot.

I guess my other piece of advice, from the time when I was burnt out is to try
to get a job in another field for a while. I know for me, the low pay and high
expectations for things like showing up on time meant that I got over my
burnout pretty goddamn quick.

------
niclash
So many comments, have not read through them all. There are so many cool
things to stick your head in, so you ask if you are getting too old; YES. I am
46, and predates your career by 15 years, and I am still fascinated over the
new possibilities that presents themselves year after year.

Sharing of ideas in Open Source; Happens all the time, maybe it is now too
technical for you to follow, and family interests keep you from digging in
enough to catch up.

Sharing of ideas of the future; Happens all the time, in blogs, tweets and
what not. In fact, we are getting drowned by so much information that it
becomes a challenge to filter the noise. AND you have a new idea right there;
Give me something to filter the garbage out and serve me the gems on a plate.
Such tool itself will accelerate ideas collaboration even more.

Privacy concerns; Centralized so called "cloud services" at various levels are
going extinct in the future, because of privacy will become a massive sore
points, possibly after some scandals (need to brew a decade or so for full
effect). So, prepare social network system that is truly distributed and where
the consumer control exactly what is shared with whom and how, and can take it
off-line...

I think over a week-end with a lot of supply of beer, I think a group of
visionaries can come up with 10-20 solid new things that is both doable, and
should inspire people who like to GetThingsDone.

So, the final question to you; Are you the consumer or the producer of the
great things to come??

------
elblanco
Sounds more like burn-out at this point. Try a related, but different job if
you can get it.

I moved from straight up developer to a technology analyst to sales to product
management (with some minor development) roles and this kind of movement has
really helped keep things fresh. It also didn't hurt that I cycled between
huge mega-corps and small companies -- each have radically different
environments with their own pluses and minuses. Stay until you get tired of
the minuses of one, then jump to the other.

One nice thing about my particular moves is that I've dragged along entire
skillsets from my previous guises that most people in that field don't have
while learning new ones from that job that I can then carry forward. It's
amazing what kinds of old skills I never thought I'd use anywhere else come up
again and again, except nobody else sees the application in their domain
because almost nobody who grew their entire career in that particular field
has had any exposure to it.

(I remember the first time I taught regular expressions and production rules
to a fellow analyst co-worker, once he "got it" his jaw just hit the floor. He
now has carried that forward into another analyst job where, just by knowing
that one simple thing, has revolutionized operations at his current employer
for a large analysis program he works on.)

------
GnarfGnarf
I wrote my first program in 1965 (FORTRAN). I was hooked and haven't had a
dull moment ever since. Then it was Assembler, COBOL, C++, PHP, C#, there's
more left for me to learn than when I started.

We have been blessed with an exceptionally rewarding craft. Only actors and
jet pilots can match the thrill we get from our jobs. The former are few, and
the latter have a short career span. There are always new projects, new worlds
to explore. Knowledge is the greatest wealth.

------
chopsueyar
I am around your age and have had similar feelings lately.

I had a Tomy Tutor, and IBM XT, a PS/2 Model 50,a 486DX-33, and others. I
started on BBSs in 7th grade.

I've always felt, the majority of those that make it big, get out of the game.
We've seen some come back (Paypal mafia), but I feel the majority of the
talent exits the industry.

With each cycle of this, we are left with a different group, which I think
explains the "chrome" you mentioned.

We saw the dot-com bubble firsthand, and maybe we want to be part of that
again? Of course, it was never really sustainable, but the optimism and
salaries of the 1990s were nothing to scoff at.

Now, to see again, approx. 15 years later, the same 640x480 screens we grew up
with, in cellphones, so we can watch movies while we drive or walk down the
street.

We were optimistic about the year 2000 since birth, and looking back, some
promised devices are beginning to emerge, like multi-touch input devices and
sleek tablets.

The majority of the innovation and technology we evolved with, is now used to
license consumers digital goods.

The internet and computers are mainstream now and it is mostly about money.
Some BBS operators did it for the money, but the majority did it for the love.

When we were kids, we could stay up until the wee hours of the morning
exploring with our PCs, while our parents took care of us. Now we must pay our
own bills, and developing software as a job can do this, but when you get
home, you don't want to work more.

Some coders I've worked with have a true obsessive compulsion for writing
code. They write code from when they wake up to when they go to sleep. Others
need to take breaks.

As many others have mentioned, take a break (if you can afford it). Otherwise,
you may have to take a lower-paying job in a different industry and trim some
expenses, but the mental health aspect could be worth it.

IMHO, the most amazing advancement to come out of any of this is...
<http://www.khanacademy.org/>

Maybe get involved with Khan? That is the one site on the internet that gives
me hope this technology can and will be used for progress.

Thank you for posting this. Lot's of valuable insight from everybody.

NO CARRIER

------
seldo
You sound burnt-out. I don't think the problem is the field, I think it's you.

Take a year off. If you can't afford a year without working, find some other
job in a completely different field, even if it pays much less. Let technology
stop being a daily grind and more of an enjoyable hobby again. You can't force
the magic to come back, but if you leave it alone, it will probably do so all
by itself.

------
HeyLaughingBoy
The OSS revolution is far from over; rather, other fields are being infected.
There's Open Source hardware and that field now even has conferences. Biology
and biochemistry are going "open source." Media is being released under
Creative Commons licensing, etc.

Children of Revolutions always go for the buck. The revolutionaries are the
idealists, the pioneers, the groundbreakers. Once the field is prepared,
that's when commercialization happens. This is not news: it's human history.

You say you're not fascinated by "...offspring of cell phones." Really? You're
not amazed that we have the technology to remotely diagnose your car when it
breaks down miles from a service station? That an amateur can put together a
device that sends him an SMS when the river level is high enough to go white
water rafting?

Having learned the technology for the last ten years, the next step is spend
ten years _applying_ the technology to change people's lives, not to idolize
it simply for its own existence.

You're an engineer? Go build something!

------
kirvero
These 2 phrases:

"Instead of the free sharing of ideas...I'm encountering more and more the
attitude of a guarded sharing...the real knowledge and experience seems to be
held back because it...might be used to turn a profit somewhere"

and

"Todays big topics leave me pretty much unenthused"

I hear a lack of motivation, not for technology, but for the specific purposes
to which technology is being put- squeezing a buck out of things.

But you're mistaking the impact that incentive structure has on your
motivation for a lack of motivation about the technology itself. It doesn't
work that way.

I suggest finding a way to spend time with organizations that have a different
incentive structure. Find someone you know and talk to them about how they use
technology. It wasn't entirely deliberate, but looking back, I can say I found
a way forward when I started working with non-profits and helping at schools.

It takes a little while, but being around people who have a non-financial
mission, and then being able to deploy what are still in those areas
incredibly useful and rare technical skills- this feeds the motivation engine.

Making money is really important, and it's very visible; the context in which
the work happens is invisible, but it's even more important.

So- it may take some time and thinking, but I would advise- stop thinking
about the details of the sausage. Server side, client side, mobile, whatever-
it's all just sausage.

Think about purpose and incentive structures.

The note you wrote is evidence that this matters to you, and that, like a
vitamin deficiency, you're missing the motivation that comes from a different
sort of incentive structure.

I would also respectfully disagree about the open source revolution being
over. For technical, social, economic reasons, looking at the trend lines, it
is very far from over. Open source, free software- this lives in and feeds an
ecosystem that is not about making a buck, and there are healthy and growing
areas in which these incentives are dominant. That OSS and FS can be consumed
by other ecosystems- that's fine, the world as a whole is healthier when you
have a balance of both. This is precisely why FS licenses are written as they
are- the act of creating a tool to a certain degree has to be agnostic about
the uses to which the tool will be put. But OSS and FS are still growing, and
gifts are everywhere being created.

Good luck.

------
jcromartie
Try to think of how computers and software could make things better and work
on that. I don't mean how they could look cooler or play games faster, but how
they could help social progress or enable revolution or democracy in the third
world or how they could pull people out of poverty and death.

------
kwellman
When the social web came out, I wasn't completely enamored with it as well. It
was only later, when I started getting into "network science"[1], and began to
view social systems and the internet as large complex systems, that the social
web really clicked as something fascinating to get involved with from an
engineering perspective.

Since, as you say, you're not a "particularly social person", maybe if you
step back from many of the inanities of the social web and take a big picture
view of the system, including the similarities between social systems,
biological systems, and other systems, you may gain a new perspective on it.

[1] See [http://www.amazon.com/Networks-Introduction-Mark-
Newman/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Networks-Introduction-Mark-
Newman/dp/0199206651/) for a good introduction.

------
lsc
>but the real knowledge and experience seems to be held back because it has to
be regarded as a personal asset that might be used to turn a profit somewhere.

You need to move. If you primarily interact in person, you need to physically
move. If you primarily interact over the internet, you need to change what
forms you use.

This is not how I see the world, especially the open-source world. From my
point of view, the open-source tendency to help people for free seems to be
bleeding over into the business world. Hell, my direct competitors help me
out. And, of course, if you ask questions with the right attitude in the right
places, there is a whole lot of free help to be had from the technical
community, too.

------
dholowiski
I was in the same position as you about 3 years ago. You know what I did? Quit
my job sold my house and went traveling for a year.it literally took 3 months
of travel and quiet contemplation before I was able to start thinking
creatively and having fun.

If you can, take a long chunk of time off and go away (this is tough to do if
you have a family). You can get so beat down, and stuck in the 'don't think
just do' mindset from working a job, and that's not so easy to fix.

Since coming back I've started my own business, and while I'm not rolling in
money I reserve at least 50%! of my time for creative projects (which right
now happens to be a. Ruby on rails beer site) and I'm more excited about
technology than I ever was.

------
bl4k
Happens to everybody. Take a timeout. In the 12 years of my career, I have
taken a total of 3 years off - and I am certain that in the 9 remaining years
I achieved more and better things than what I would have had I worked the 12
years straight through.

It is like when you have been staring at a computer screen for long hours at a
stretch trying to solve a problem. You stand up and move away from your desk
and within a few moments all the answers and solutions storm through.

Your career and personal life are no different. Perhaps you are trying to hard
to find the answers - so stand up and walk away for a little while.

~~~
darwinGod
Interesting.. Could you elaborate at which stage in your career did you take 3
years off? How did you deal with family/relationships? So, if your kid comes
along and says he does not want to go to school,what do you tell him?

~~~
bl4k
I took it in 3 blocks of around a year each. After 2.5 years of working, after
5 years of working and then after around 7-8 years of working. Completely
changed my life.

I am a dropout, so if my own child doesn't want to go to school I would
support him/her just as my parents did with me.

------
kennu
I think I know how the OP feels. I have a similar history with computers and I
get bored maybe once a year.

But in my case, some new and interesting problem always appears before long,
benefiting from the use of new and interesting technology. This year it has
been mostly NoSQL. Next year it might be something completely different.

Technology by itself is only fascinating for a short while. Finding
interesting problems and real-world projects where to use it is the cool part.
I consider my own job a great one because the environment and people often
make this possible.

------
gintas
I think that if it seems that "there is nothing new under the sun", you're
probably looking at things from too far away. Try looking into more concrete
matters (best: a specific problem, easiest: specific technology). In my
experience I know that at times I have been engrossed in what would now appear
to be awfully boring things, just because I dug deep enough.

[Corollary: if you think that revolutions in your field are happening every
month, you may want to have a look at the state of things from afar.]

------
imasr
Similar background 15K miles down south of you, though the same thing happen
to me earlier this year and I had it coming. Too much work on things I didn't
like. I took some time off to figure it out and it worked. If you can, don't
rush it and try to focus on what you really enjoy, no matter how hard or crazy
may seam at first, and you'll find it. The shallow scenery is an opportunity
to us, oldies. Lets show we still have a few tricks and cooler than ever.

------
chipsy
It took me a bit over a year of job-independence and several projects that
didn't work out to find something I could really get passionate about again.
To do it, I really had to move away from "new tech for it's own sake" types of
ideas and instead indulge a specific vision - something more _artistic_ than
technical.

Work on your life, and then work on your work. That will make you strong
enough to see past the hype cycle.

------
cageface
I can definitely relate. I'm doing two things to combat this. First, I'm
taking a year off to travel. This doesn't take that much money if you do it
frugally. Second, I'm studying an entirely new problem domain. I picked
machine learning, but I think anything that requires you to learn some new
fundamentals that don't necessarily have directly to do with tech can work.

------
WalterBright
When I get a bit tired of working on software, I work on my hotrod ('72 Dodge
Challenger), which has no computers (or even electronics) of any kind in it.
It's very refreshing to work on totally mechanical systems with my own hands,
and have them come alive.

After a while, I'm ready to go back to the keyboard.

------
known
I think by the time we reach 40 we should move to manufacturing or agriculture
sector.

------
j1o1h1n
Yep, the social web is a misnomer, and cellphones are nice and all, but who
has the stomach to learn another gui toolkit? How about biology? Study
biology, perhaps at a university, build the geneticist's philosopher's
stone...

------
nodogbite
Try creating something new instead of learning about what other people have
created.

------
chillitom
Teach?

~~~
AdmiralBeotch
I completely agree with this... Your excitement will be renewed 10 fold by the
excitement you see when tutoring the next generation of nerds. Nothing beats
seeing the lightbulb flip on when an 8 year old "gets" binary math or writes
their first program under your guidance. Nothing.

------
phr
You graduated shortly after 9/11/2001 and you feel old already? You're just a
kid! Take some of the great advice here and be glad you got to this point so
early in your life.

------
teyc
I thought the likes of iPad will reboot computing. A lot of things we imagined
in the past has suddenly become possible. Why not see what's there?

~~~
arethuza
I'm 45 and I think I giggled like a 5 year old when I first started using the
Star Walk application on my iPad.

------
scg
Make something people want.

I'm being presumptive but your post talks only about technology as if you care
more about it than just means to an end.

~~~
what_happened
You're probably mostly correct with that assumption. For me the exploration of
new concepts was the driving force and the main endorphine trigger. Actually
applying what was learned was more of an afterthought.

It's probably no coincidence that I studied theoretical CS and minored in math
:)

------
andrewstuart
Have a holiday then do stuff with computers that you enjoy and try to find a
career that is perhaps not in computers.

------
ten7
You should just become a journalist: your writing is readible, sincere,
succinct and honest.

------
Goladus
Start pushing forward yourself. You've spent 30 years consuming the knowledge
of others, now it's time to start giving back. Identify the real source of
your disillusionment and dedicate yourself to fixing it.

------
c00p3r
Congratulations! Discovering the giant treadmill is a huge achievement.

Now You should accept the facts, step out from it, relax and fall in love with
something still unknown and unexplored, and doing it just for fun. Or _just
fro lulz_ in a newspeak. ^_^

Today Open source is just another name of business. The next evolutionary step
toward literally nothing. So, accept it and relax and try to find something
that you could love.

I'm, for example, going trough MIT and Berkeley online courses after 15 years
of being UNIX sysadmin and system engineer, without any ambitions to shake the
world, just fro lulz.

btw, your question itself contains a big bold cue - just fins a new love. ^_^

You may also try to search in a realms outside CS, but I wouldn't advice you
to do so. After so many years spent, it is better to stay in the field.

