Read: Code is boring

Philipp Schneider11/8/2023

This article gets it right. Go read it!

Boring is good. Be it boring technology choices, or usable design. Boring is productive. Boring allows us to become masters of the tools we use, instead of chasing the latest fad and re-learning everything every week, all the while using unproven, immature, buggy technology that is doing things different without necessarly doing it better. Not boring contributes to our bad rep.

Code is just a means to an end. A way to solve a problem. Developer’s thrill should primarily stem from solving actual¹ problems, not from the high of playing with “new toys” in a greenfield project or one’s clean refactorings that are not perceivable by humans affected by or using the software. Since we’re actually so bad at creating working systems with our code, maybe it’s not sad if AI will end up being the only creator of code, just like way less people have to touch assembler nowadays. If you are motivated by solving problems, you’ll realize that your identity is not tied to writing code. You might find yourself seeing how graduating to management / leadership might be attractive - one doesn’t have to change one’s intrinsic motivation all that much.