Post

What industry would you recommend going into instead, if one likes programming?

Prompt engineering, it’s the future. 🙄

When I did my software development education, I didn't know I was about to enter a career in politics...

It’s always been mostly meetings

I am not a programmer by trade. Probably this is the only reason I enjoy it.

so its best to program more? okay ty

And "learn to learn" - a solid foundational algorithm / data structure understanding is great, but expect having to learn new languages every now and then, new frameworks relatively often. Even moreso if you want to do frontend stuff.

Start small. A critical skill you need to develop is reading the documentation for your language. Find the parts of your current programs that you do not understand, read about them, and test yourself by using them in a new way to make another small project.

My process might only work for me but usually I just end up having an idea of what I need my computer to do, even a small thing, and try to make that a project instead of finding something online. Like make a dice roller, or something I did recently that uses a UI to pull up PNGs of cards I have.

If you don't have any of your own ideas for projects yet, just pick something popular and rebuild it. Great way to learn.

I am pretty passionate about many things, and when what makes me a living isn’t going to make me a living any more I shift to something else that I live that does. Not that it’s easy…

I don’t know - loving something gives you passion and drive to be really good at something, and hopefully to want to make a real contribution. I would look at it a bit differently; I want to love what I do that supports me, but not be dependent on it forever.

I choose both: a dev job, but with work-life balance. I can do Programming as a hobby as well. 😁

I agree and I wish people could do whatever creative endeavor they want. Without worrying about if it's going to be stable, or worry about what others may think of them.

Skill issue

A.I. does all that now. sorry. please note the change, however. thanks!

yarp. great for boilerplate. frequently wrong when used with enterprise systems

Yeah.

It's important to point out that the reason for this varies wildly between companies. In some cases, it's simply the fact that the software you *do* write has to interact with tons of other systems and tools. Working with that stuff doesn't always feel like programming, but it *can* be equally fun.

Thanks to vibe coding as well, programming is just about fixing bugs in spaghetti and pulling your hair out.

Now life has thrown me more than I can handle, and I would never reach out if this weren’t urgent. It weighs heavily on my heart — but I still trust in our compassion and shared humanity. Your kindness could make all the difference. If you can help🙏💙 gofund.me/0af928df

It’s why I retired 5 years ago to focus on my actual software projects - and I’m sure it’s gotten exponentially worse since then.

I've seen the "flow experience" of programming reduced to basically nil over the course of my 25-year career. If it isn't meetings it's JIRA or release checklists or the endless 2FA hoops to do any damn thing.

Me just this morning to my boss : ugh, I'm just spending my time trying to figure out what ticket to do, then do tickets so others do the expected job. And then explaining stuff to the offshore girls. Because our app isn't actually that simple.

To the people who furiously disagree with me on this one: it's okay to not like Programming. Majority of people on Earth don't like it. You don't have to prove anything to anybody. Keep doing your job if it satisfies all your needs. I'm not talking about you.

There's a bubble, it will pop. I don't know if that will actually stop the slow march toward total AI automation, but it might give devs a few years of good work opportunities a la Y2K.

You're not the first programmer that I've seen to make that statement.

💯

I'm going to print this and frame it for my office

I'm doing a lot of programming (less than 50% of my time is wasted on meetings... yay?), but I'm annoyed at the ratio of code needed to solve [the actual problem] vs the amount of code needed to solve [our environment being bad and falling apart if you look at it funny]

I keep getting promoted into managing devs. I became a contractor not for the money, but to control how I spent my time. (Note: that was then, it was a good idea before I had massive responsibilities 🙃)

Like… not to brag or anything

Just gotta stop taking promotions right before you get into management. I'm a senior software engineer and I only do software engineering

Why Programming with capital P? Geniune question