| I got really burned out on programming my senior year at university and after 2 years of working alone on a massive web app. There are many other things I'd rather be doing, like running a company or killing people for money or something exciting, but I suspect that those jobs would get boring/old after a while too. The important thing to keep in mind is that your day job is a way to earn an income. If you don't enjoy it, at least do yourself a favor and find one you care to show up to every day. If you really want to work on "hard problems" and other groundbreaking and cutting edge technologies, you can always do it in your free time. Whether you want to write software at work and then do it at home is another story, but keep in mind that if you're successful, you can turn your side project into your career, one you actually do give a shit about doing every day. The great thing about software is that you are only limited by your knowledge and determination. There are very few problems you need a massive expensive computer to solve (at a small scale, at least), so your home computer is usually just as capable as your work computer. If you're bored with programming, why don't you start digging into the parts that really get you excited. For me, that's functional languages and dynamic typed languages, computer vision, and machine learning. Don't be afraid to try new things and fail at them. If you just sit around doing the same mundane work all day, don't be surprised when you believe all of software is mundane. I actually agree that programming sucks, but that's more to do with the fact that you have to turn an idea into logic and math before you can make a computer do it. |