The Programmer Identity Crisis

> One could only wonder why they became a programmer in the first place, given their seeming disinterest in coding.

To solve problems. Coding is the means to an end, not the end itself.

> careful configuration of our editor, tinkering with dot files, and dev environments

That may be fun for you, but it doesn’t add value. It’s accidental complexity that I am happy to delegate.

The point of most jobs in the world is to "solve problems". So why did you pick software over those?

Why would someone who likes solving problems choose a very lucrative career path solving problems… hmmm

You can also solve problems as a local handyman but that doesn’t pad the 401K quite as well as a career in software.

I feel like there’s a lot of tech-fetishist right now on the “if you don’t deeply love to write code then just leave!” train without somehow realizing that most of us have our jobs because we need to pay bills, not because it’s our burning passion.

At 47, I am an older guy already. But in my generation, people who went on to be programmers usually started tinkering with code at ~ 11 y.o. (back then on ZX Spectrum and similar cheap beasts available in freshly post-Communist Europe) out of interest and passion, not because of "I want to build a lucrative career".

(Given how massively widespread piracy was back then, programming looked rather like a good way to do hard work for free.)

Money matters, but coders who were drawn into the field purely by money and are personally detached from the substance of the job is an unknown species for me.

"You can also solve problems as a local handyman"

That is NOT the same sort of talent. My fingers are clumsy; my mind is not.

Hard agree, I am 51 and all of this resonates true with me except…

> That is NOT the same sort of talent. My fingers are clumsy; my mind is not.

if handyman work was paying $600/hr your fingers would un-clums themselves reaaaaaaly fast :)