Finding happiness in development
| 2 min read
It’s no secret a lot of software engineers have been dealing with the crisis of a sudden loss of meaning and enjoyment from their day jobs. I’m not here to say AI is evil. That’s a stance I used to take, but I no longer feel that way, and I use the tool frequently myself. But AI has stripped away a lot of the enjoyment that used to come with software development.
Being a software developer used to mean solving puzzle-like problems in creative, efficient ways. Now, it means having multiple LLM panels open, tackling 2-10 tickets at once. It’s not even remotely enjoyable, and it’s a one-way road to burnout city.
Yeah, that bad boy is live code
So how do I personally deal with this? Doing things in my free time the old fashioned way! For example, while migrating this blog back to Pure Blog, I’ve been making a lot of customizations to the styling and code. While there are much more “correct” ways to do this, I find enjoyment in simply pointing Nova directly at the server via SFTP and editing files live. I’ve also been configuring the server directly via SSH, not infra-as-code BS. Sure, it’s all terrible practice, but it’s fun!
I think the need to use personal projects as a skill-up or portfolio piece is falling to the wayside. This frees one to just have fun outside of work. And I highly suggest you do so, or you’ll completely burn out of this industry all together.