[ofrzeta]

I was at one of the first "DevOps Days" conferences in Hamburg where we sat in a huge circle and everyone had to introduce themselves and say what they are "passionate" about. Although I am a little bit more interested in the craft than an average 9to5 programmer I couldn't bring myself to use that phrase and could only articulate what I am "interested in". I am not a native English speaker so maybe my feelings around the meaning of "passion" are distorted but I didn't get how you could be passionate about continuous integration.

[josephorjoe]

Oh, your understanding of what "passionate" means in English is perfect.

"Passionate" has nothing to do with taking satisfaction in performing an interesting job well and being fairly compensated for your efforts and having some appreciation for the opportunities you are given.

It has everything to do with feeling such strong emotions about something that you make decisions guided by emotion rather than logic.

Although I suspect the never ending abuse of the word will eventually change the meaning to actually mean "moderately enthusiastic about and interested in".

Sort of like how in English "awesome" has been degraded from "that inspires both fear and wonder that I do not normally experience" to "that pleases me somewhat".

[burnished]

Passion refers to a level of intensity, desire, or obsession. It frequently is used to talk about romantic love but can refer to other things. You were probably right to use the word 'interested' over 'passionate', but if there is a some one who is staying up late working on and thinking about continuous integration then they could say they were passionate about it. There has probably been at least a couple dry technical topics that made you feel passionate in the same way some one could be passionate about CI. I wouldn't call being passionate about something to be typical though so its a pretty weird question to ask a circle of people.