| Echoing the sentiment of others here, a “good programmer” is not one that is able to implement some weird algorithm or complex data structure from memory. If that where the metric I prefer working with “bad programmers”, say, that that actually get stuff done vs endless pedantic discussion about performance, optimization, and yes, nonsensical algorithms that are already implemented and tested in most languages standard libraries! With that said, I hear you. It sounds like you might be feeling burned out? Something that brought a lot of joy back to my programming career was learning C, low level and embedded programming. There are a lot naysayers that will point how C is an insecure language and whatnot, but what C gives you, or makes you do, is understand how a computer actually works. Where is stuff placed in memory, what is your OS API (syscalls) or what are registers and how a CPU runs something (embedded programming). YMMV of course, but getting the those insights has been invaluable for me and very fun! One feels back in control building stuff, as opposed to doing the work of a plumber just plugging stuff together (nothing bad with that, is mostly that kind of work that pays the bills after all!) Anyways, just my two cents. Hope you can figure something out! |