Ask HN: After 20 years of coding it is not a fun hobby anymore. How about you?

3 pointsposted 8 hours ago
by alex_x

Item id: 49207122

4 Comments

johncoltrane

7 hours ago

Coding _as a job_ stopped being fun a long time ago and I think it has a strong effect on my hobby choices. After a day of dealing with issue trackers, AI-generated accessibility reports and all that crap I find it harder and harder to switch to my side projects.

I've been logged out of my personal GitHub account for months, actually… and that's probably a good thing: more outdoors, more photography, more drawing, more reading, etc.

alex_x

6 hours ago

Agree on it being a good thing

JSR_FDED

6 hours ago

I’m not there yet, but my vision for when I’m retired was always to spend leisurely time learning more stuff, building cool things, meeting up with fellow enthusiasts and perhaps coaching or mentoring others.

But it’s been quite unsettling the last year to realize that that probably isn’t going to be the retirement I’m going to have.

LLMs have made that whole thing feel pointless. Kind of like an athlete who loves his sport wondering if he’ll continue to get enjoyment out of it knowing that every person can just take a pill and be instantly as good.

abstractspoon

2 hours ago

I've just retired after 30 years of coding and still program as a hobby 3+ hours a day. FWIW I don't and never have used LLMs