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I just want to code (2023)

(www.zachbellay.com)
288 points SCUSKU | 1 comments | 27 Apr 25 20:08 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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alkonaut ◴[28 Apr 25 06:48 UTC] No.43818348[source]▶
Do many people hobby code with that entrepreneur mindset thing? Or sit down to play guitar thinking they want to make a hit and feeling bad if they just noodle some cover songs? What a miserable existence that must be. How do you get that way? Should we blame LinkedIn or what is it?
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ramon156 ◴[28 Apr 25 07:24 UTC] No.43818559[source]▶
Because having your own product is something that on paper sounds extremely rewarding. If you do it well, the maintenance might be less than the work you put in your actual job.

Some people want to break out of the cycle, and you can't really blame them for it when the economy is hurting working people (ofcourse excluding that writing software is relative to other jobs a cushion job)

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zeroc8 ◴[28 Apr 25 07:52 UTC] No.43818724[source]▶
It's not a cushion job. At least not when you are working on a huge codebase together with lots of other developers.
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sethammons ◴[28 Apr 25 10:06 UTC] No.43819503[source]▶
What other jobs have you had? I have been a photo lab assistant, a sign maker apprentice, a graphic designer, an insurance agent, a financial advisor, a construction worker and manual laborer, an inner-city math teacher, a software developer turned manager turn developer, now at the staff level.

Software is the most cush job I have had. More money for less work. Better perks. Less stress overall. Constantly learning, yes. Often frustrating, yes. But having financial resources beyond what the other jobs could provide is a thing. Other jobs I could leave at work, sure, but others I couldn't. I would never go back to being a public high school teacher; that shit was the suck. So was selling stocks. Software is a dream in comparison.

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pc86 ◴[28 Apr 25 13:41 UTC] No.43821449[source]▶
100% - my friends who have only ever written code think it's a "hard" job in the objective sense. That among all possible jobs, it is on the difficult side of the spectrum.

I've been an EMT, a line cook, a dishwasher, a waiter, sold insurance, and worked on political campaigns. The easiest of all those is 10x harder than the hardest day of writing code.

It's frustrating at times, sure. There's office politics, sure. We probably have to deal with a disproportionate percentage of weaponized autism, sure.

But it is a cushy job and the "money per unit of effort" metric is off the charts compared to basically every other job I can think of, and definitely every other job I've ever had.

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1. bigstrat2003 ◴[28 Apr 25 15:05 UTC] No.43822290{3}[source]▶
Yeah, I definitely agree with you. Any time you see someone saying how hard it is to write code as a job, you can tell they've never had a "real" job. I grew up working on a farm every day - I would take programming every day of the week. Even on the days when I'm frustrated or dealing with difficult people, it's better than hard physical labor which wears down your body, is fairly gross (lots of poop!), and doesn't even pay 1/2 of what programming does.