[greenspot]

Is 'not finishing' an inherent problem of being a coder and a coder's reward system?

When I look at myself, coding is great when I learn new things, new APIs, can glue stuff together to create new systems which haven't been there before. Once I master a technology or have to do stuff which was done million times before it gets boring. Then, I rather seek for the next kick, the next API, the next language/framework/lib.

So, having ongoing novelties seems to be an important part of a coder's reward system. This hurts finishing and going the last mile, the most difficult part of a project that is not about facing steady novelties. Often it even means to abandon the shiny new tech and rebuild stuff in some proven tech.

However, the bad is you never finish, the good is you learn all the time. Better than checking Facebook, Instagram and your smartphone 24/7.

[dasboth]

I find this as well. My motivation for new projects is 100x compared to my motivation to finish existing ones, and I feel part of it at least is because on the existing ones I've reached a point where I'm not learning anything from finishing them. The flipside is that I have a lot less work that I can point to having done, compared to how much I've actually done. Having 5 completed things to show is better (for "achievement" purposes) than 20 projects at 80%, but the rewards as you say favour the latter.

This year I'm thinking about only working on projects where I'd actually use the outcome for something. If it's a project for the sake of learning library X, I won't do it. If it's a project to solve problem Y for myself, I'll try and work on that, learning anything I need along the way.