i wanna have fun programming again - eviltoast

after a grueling 4 years of school and a bit of time at a fintech company ive lost almost all the enjoyment i once had for computers in high school. what kind of projects or whatever can i do to have fun again without feeling stressed.

edit: thanks everyone for such creative suggestions!! anything else on the internets just like build a trivia game teehee but yall put real thought into this shit, thank you!!

  • bort@feddit.de
    13·
    1 year ago

    what kind of projects or whatever can i do to have fun again without feeling stressed.

    • Write programs that scratch your own itch.
    • write bots for communities you care about.
    • write userscripts/browserextentions
    • do programming/hacking challenges

    (for stuff that is always online, like a bot, or a webservice, I recommend getting a dedicated computer, like a raspberry pi or a small vps)

    also some general recommendation

    • keep you goals small and tangible. If a thing takes more than one sitting to complete, it will add to your stress when you add the remainder to your todo list.
    • do the simplest thing, that could possibly work.
    • when doing new stuff, use chatgpt to come up with a plan/boilerplate/demo/2nd opinion.

    from personal experience: before I went to college, I had lots of fun doing programming challenges. During college I lost all interest in programming. At my first real job, I regained my love for programming, when I started programming things, that actual people need to improve their daily work. Since then I enjoy programming for work, as well as in my free time.

    • gerryflap@feddit.nl
      2·
      1 year ago

      Interesting how college ruined your love for programming and work got it back. For me it’s almost the complete opposite. Studying Computer Science constantly fed me with new interesting ideas, and I still had more time to play around with those ideas. At work I’m just implementing some button or some boring logic 40 hours a week and after that I’m too drained to explore any of my (many) ideas further.

      I guess it’s a difference in incentive. I don’t care whether anyone will use what I wrote, I just want to learn something new and explore ideas.

      • bort@feddit.de
        2·
        1 year ago

        Interesting how college ruined your love for programming

        it was probably the general pressure and depression.

        and work got it back

        the costumers and the colleague were nice people. I enjoyed solving actual real-life problems.

        Studying Computer Science constantly fed me with new interesting ideas, and I still had more time to play around with those ideas.

        after my first job, I went back to college (uni?) to get my masters. There I had lots of fun implementing some of the theoretical stuff.