[deaconblues]

I was wondering the other day: is it possible to enjoy coding, be good and employable, and still leave your work at work? I code at home too, but yeah, other passions take priority. You rarely hear about programmers who don't live and breathe code, but there must be a huge number of them.

[BSousa]

Yes!

If you hang around HN or the trendy hipster blogosphere, then no. Seems those developers are the scum of the earth and shouldn't be allowed near a computer, but in the real world, those are the ones doing important development in medicine, banking, military, etc, while keeping normal work hours. Just because they don't create the 389th Javascript frontend MVC fully reactive template based framework and create 50 blog posts about it, doesn't mean they aren't good at their jobs.

[noir_lord]

80/20 principle probably applies.

I've known lots of programmers who turn up, do a good job then go home, they don't blog, follow frameworks or languages or any of the other stuff that isn't directly required for work.

[mgraybosch]

Hi, deaconblues. I'm guy who write this article. I can't speak for anybody but myself, but developers who don't live and breathe code probably don't work in the major tech hubs or for startups.

I'm a contractor who does a hell of a lot of work for state governments. An NDA precludes my naming names, but I work in a Microsoft shop and I've spent the last year helping reverse-engineer a legacy system implemented in COBOL than ran on an IBM mainframe.

It isn't sexy work, but somebody has to do it. Why not mercenaries with bad attitudes like me? :)

[collyw]

Yes. Actually most programmers I work with seem to be 9-5ers without any passion. I am a 9-5er with some passion about the languages and tools I use.

[deaconblues]

I guess I'd just like the distinction that not living and breathing code doesn't equal a lack of passion. I'm passionate about programming. Can't say I ever was about washing dishes. They were both jobs, though, and when I get off work, there are other things I want to do.

[collyw]

There are other things outside of work that I am more passionate about. But programming can be interesting, and pays the bills.