[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

[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.

[Kurtz79]

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

So true. As someone that likes to watch Twitch, it is not uncommon to see streamers abandoning a game they have streamed for years, even if it means taking a huge hit in terms of viewership.

Even playing a game can be work, if done for work.