Do you really love coding? Just answer honestly

I’m one of those people who decided to switch career. I never knew who I wanted to be when grew up. I don’t have any passion or hobbies that could be monetized. I’m getting quickly tired of everything I’m doing. When I look around at other people, especially on LinkedIng all I see is this phony learned by heart text: “I love coding so much”, “I’m so excited”, “I’m so happy”, “Best team ever”, and I just don’t believe them. Everything just can’t be so. I’ve been learning web with breaks for a year, I also majoring in CS at college. I have my doubts. I do not feel like all those people on LinkedIn. I do not hate it, but I don’t have this sick excitement neither. I don’t know what to do with my life.

Please share your story. Do you feel the same or did you really find the love of your life?

I’m 47 years old, and I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Times like this set off lots of self-reflection. I don’t really have an answer for you, but just know you’re not alone.

LinkedIn is not the best indicator for reality.

Think your usual social media “fakeness” then amplify it with real stakes related to job performance. Few people go on LinkedIn and talk about how much they hate their job, how much they hate their work, and how much they hate hate their co-workers.

I don’t “love” coding, but I tolerate it very well. I think anyone with plans to be doing development needs to have some level of tolerance for failure, for debugging, for handling problems. You can’t just run the moment something doesn’t work. You also can’t be ashamed of not knowing something, as there is always so much to learn, no one can know it all.

Love is a strong emotion, as is hate, and I have a mix of both while doing my day job. It might be fun and games until you find bugs, and then your code doesn’t work, then you get pulled into a meeting, and once you come back more bugs appear, and you feel like taking your computer out the window, or taking a hammer to your keyboard. At that point you walk away, clear your mind and come back. No where during such an endeavour do you “love it”.

I do think development is a great career for specific people. I’ve always liked puzzles, learning and facing challenges. All of that comes with the job, so I’m very happy with my career. It pays well, the job security should be good in the near future, and its never dull.

I’d say its my “dream job”, but that doesn’t mean its 100% sunshine and roses all the time.

PS. College was really boring and filled with a bunch of stuff I didn’t care too much about. Its great for learning the core concepts that are behind everything, but it usually skips over a lot of practical knowledge that is not only “cooler”, but also more useful day to day as a software engineer.

Good luck, stay in school, keep building and keep learning!

My point of view on the topic settled after I read “So good they can’t ignore you” by Cal Newport

you get passionate about something the more effort you put at it, the better you become, and other factors

but yes, I like coding, but I like solving math problems and algorithms to relax. That part of coding I take pretty easy.