[farias0]

Yeah, I guess the real question here is "do you love programming?" If you do you can make it work, it's a matter of not giving up and instead tweaking your learning system, practicing more and better, etc. If you don't you need to find another area.

Programming is a very demanding trade, and I don't think you can do it just for the paycheck, you need to have some degree of passion for it. If someone disagrees with me about this I'd love to hear different takes.

[WnZ39p0Dgydaz1]

> Programming is a very demanding trade, and I don't think you can do it just for the paycheck, you need to have some degree of passion for it. If someone disagrees with me about this I'd love to hear different takes.

Consider that many people out there are doing repetitive and demanding physical labor "just for the paycheck". I'm sure those people would love to trade with someone who is sitting at the desk for 8 hours and earning 4-5x the amount, even if they had to do nothing but pressing the same button the whole time.

[pengaru]

> Programming is a very demanding trade, and I don't think you can do it just for the paycheck, you need to have some degree of passion for it. If someone disagrees with me about this I'd love to hear different takes.

There are more people writing programs as a daily grind for a paycheck than as passionate artisans practicing their craft, and it's only getting more so as "CS" becomes an increasingly blue-collar field.

What you said strikes me as a rather dated view of programming. It was certainly more true back when just to operate a computer required significant resources, skill, and perseverance. It used to be such a horribly tedious, time-consuming chore to program them, that it often required something like passionate interest to stick it through.

[4RRLxFWs]

Not sure what you're disagreeing with. I don't think the person you're responding to thinks it's /impossible to get a gig as a programmer for a while, but that it's not going to yield a fulfilling career if one is merely chasing a paycheck. I think that's about right.

[pessimizer]

> Programming is a very demanding trade, and I don't think you can do it just for the paycheck, you need to have some degree of passion for it. If someone disagrees with me about this I'd love to hear different takes.

I don't have any different abstract or psychological take on it, I just know people who have programmed for 30 years who don't love it now, and some who never loved it and always wished they were doing something more interesting. They are also perfectly good programmers, who work because they get paid for it rather than some spiritual edification.

[4RRLxFWs]

Agreed.

Another factor, though, is that the interest generated from programming can be related to the thing a person is working on. A crescent wrench would be a boring object if all you did was wack it against the ground. But if it becomes a critical feature in constructing something, one probably acquires an interest. I can say that there are many things within this general field of playing-with-computers that I have previously found uninteresting, and now am quite fascinated about, but only because I've found uses. I've also been painfully unenthusiastic about some assigned work.

I'd also find it unlikely that humans in general are not interested in "making things," and insofar as programming/software is a vehicle for this, do possess an intrinsic potential to explore the field and acquire an interest. But the field rewards the independent-minded, as it's mostly through your own work, on your own projects, that generate a lasting interest (I believe).

[Sammi]

Disagree. "Do you love programming" is as useless a question as "do you love digging". Loving to dig holes is not a good nor sufficient reason to dig holes all day every day. It just ends up being Sisyphean and pointless.

You need a reason to do things. A problem to solve, because people are problem solving machines. We make up problems if we don't have any at hand. Games are made up problems. But making things better in some way, is the best and most motivating kind of problems people can have.

So don't program for programming sake's, program to solve a problem that you care about.

[phkahler]

I'll bite. I used to enjoy programming just for the fun of it. By that I mean the satisfaction of getting the machine to do what I wanted it to do (never mind the huge psychoanalysis of emotional neglect here). I would still write programs that interested me, but the satisfaction tended to come from making it work. Imagine making games but not really caring to play them.

I've moved past that. I still write software but now it's more a means to an end. It's best if I'm working on something I care about and code is just how to get there.

It's not all one or the other though. I started learning Rust and that's kinda cool on it's own because it's no so tedious as C++. Point is that my interest in writing code has shifted a lot and I still do it.

[emsy]

I’ve seen enough colleagues who are just in it for the money and found a niche inside the company that avoids anything demanding. In that regard you can work in a mind numbing fashion that other, often lower paid, professions also have. I wouldn’t recommend it though because the trouble comes when switching jobs can’t be avoided.

[twowatches]

This describes me to a certain degree, and it's perfectly doable. I'm sure a lot of people do this, and I think a lot of the "find something you love" kind of posts are idealistic and unrealistic. I used to love software when I was younger and it was fresh and I still thought I might be a genius who could do something amazing, but then I went it to the real world and discovered that I was fairly average in what I did and, much importantly, anything you do for 40 hours a week becomes boring and a drag. That's why I keep my real interests and hobbies to my spare time where they're limited in time so they can't get boring. But at the same time this means I will never get that good at anything.

There are a small percentage of folk who are really good at programming and are at the bleeding edge making really cool stuff but for the vast majority it's just brick laying for a wage, which I think is fine but programming is exhausting so it's hard to find comfort and not burn out. I manage by having found cool guys to work with so it's a good laugh. I do wonder what I'll do when I finally just don't have the mental resilience to write code anymore and have to find another job.