[gordaco]

I used to have that passion, when I was young (I'm 29 now, so not very young for the tech world, although not old either). And to be honest, it was the 40+ work week what killed it. I never liked specialization, so to me it makes a lot of sense that, if you're already investing that much time in technology, you may spend the rest of the week doing a different thing. I'm getting a new degree (in principle, I don't plan to make a career change, I just want to do something different with my evenings). And this summer I'm learning a bit of Finnish on my own, because why not. Obviously, it's not like I ran out of curiosity, but rather, that I prefer to direct it to several different things than focusing on a single one.

If I devoted my free time to technology, I would be doing so just not to become obsolete, not out of genuine interest, and that would be too frustrating. I actually have some tech interests (Scala, Hadoop, any kind of complex algorithm, etc), but when I get home, there is so much I'd rather do, that I don't program at home any more, except on rare occasions.

There is a lot of pressure to spend all your waking time on technology and things related to your work or your career (I'd say this is part of the so-called "Californian ideology", maybe I'm wrong). But, in actuality, not that much people is so obsessed with learning the same area, and the competition to not get behind is mostly illusory (ageism is another different problem; and no amount of knowledge will free you from it). So my advice here is that, if you don't feel like devoting your life to a single thing, forget about your job the very moment you close your office's door, and enjoy any other of the million things life has to offer. And of course, if you are really that passionate, keep learning new programming languages or techniques on your free time (just be careful about burnout).

Final note: the most tech-passionate guy on my job is one of the oldest (36). It's not a matter of losing it over time, it's a simple matter of people's preferences (and in some cases evolution over time).

[dclowd9901]

I think the tech industry discounts the value of expanding your horizons. I have a background in design and writing, and when I choose to incorporate those disciplines into what I do with code, a lot of magic happens. Let's say I order a class like a do a news article (upside down pyramid, aka most important shit first). Or I apply my own design eye to the motion or interactivity of a static design. Or even to how I interpret the structure of the code?

Reach out. Learn as much as you can. You end up finding a lot of relationships between a lot of things in life that can apply equally to each other. Right now I'm digging deep into car repair. It's fun to find the correlations between the component systems of a car and software.

[csixty4]

> I think the tech industry discounts the value of expanding your horizons. I have a background in design and writing,

I had a developer get up in my face once and chew me out for studying design in my spare time instead trying more new languages and frameworks because I'm a developer, dammit, and it should be all I live, eat, and breathe.

That's bull. Well-rounded people bring a lot to teams, the least of which being the ability to speak to other specialties in a common language.

Keep broadening your horizons & keep being awesome.

[Ixiaus]

I think expanding horizons beyond technology is a really important key idea that you've stated.

Programmers that are learning more mathematics, music, painting, or a scientific discipline beyond computers really expand their available set of symbols and motifs - creative ideas then emerge from that soup.