[ranty]

You've not burned out, you've matured as a programmer. You can see all the crap for what it is so now try and make a difference...

Champion the cause of code that's legible - and that doesn't mean covering it in syntactic sugar. Legible code makes it damn obvious what it does and how it does it. Sometime find the "power take off" for a tractor ... that's what you're trying to do.

You can also champion the cause of not fixing that which is broken. There is also fun to be had demonstrating the technical debt is real debt and it does need to be paid back.

Much fun introducing peer review, too.

Get yourself, your team or whatever to sit next to your damn customer. Have them look at what you're doing at least once a day so they can say "oh, no, not like that" before it turns into a $100k fuckup.

So, yeah, you've just got through to the next level. It's not the software that's the challenge, it's the people.

[wtd]

I agree. You need to take it to the next level, and don't just consider software and coding projects. We all love to hate on 'management' in companies of all sizes, but the world would be a better place for all of us if managers had your deep technical expertise. You'll be of more value to the company architecting the solution (or preventing the next $100k screwup), and matching people to the right places, than you were coding.

[ak39]

"Get yourself, your team or whatever to sit next to your damn customer."

Well said. The customer is the final and only arbiter on our disagreements about tech tool choice, style and architecture. In front of the customer, all our internal arguments look and sound like those of immature, spoilt and unfocused professionals.

Add to that that many IT professionals dislike getting advice/input from non-techs and you see why we have so many broken systems out there.