Hi! I’ve been thinking about it, why people decide to program? Why do people chose a lonely job? Why do they decide to work every day in front of a screen in an office or at home? Why passing your day solving puzzle after puzzle?
I am a very social person, and sometimes being alone, for long times, in my office makes me feel incredibly sad (I don’t program as a job but I am lucky enough that I have time to study and work on open source software from there sometimes). Yes, it’s good that I am not under a bright hot sun in summer and I am not always fatigued by the harshness of a physically demanding job, but at the same time being lonely so much time with something that requires so much focus have its cons as well.
I have some experience in more physical jobs and, while it was definitely more tiring, it was good to have someone to talk to, for example, and to detatch from your thoughts for a while. You can also procrastinate so much being in front of a PC and finding the skills and tweaks to not do it, especially for someone who was addicted to the internet, is another job by itself.
Deciding to study programming for me (all on my own by reading documentation) was an incredibly hard decision and today it still requires a huge amount of will and strength. I was depressed for years and the cognitive impairment coming from depression (and who knows maybe from genetics) is something I am starting to unwind only now. I believe someone is what it is, but the power of change is always there, and cannot be ignored.
I might have an etremely hard time to study and do it veeery slowly while other people can be at university and pass exam after exam, but I’m also conscious I was starting from nothing, nothing at all. From the pits of years of suicidal depression, sometimes filled with substance abuse.
I will be honest, it was and sometimes still is excruciatingly painful.
Coming out from there was the hardest thing I did in my life and it took years. I still need to work on traumas, and that probably takes most of my energies still today.
I see programming and computers not only as something to focus my (so strong) neurotic energies on, something to help me build my cognitive skills, or a possibly well payed job which I could do from everywhere, but also as something to work on and to improve life for other people.
If you read books like digital minimalism by cal Newport, stolen focus by Johan hari, or program or be programmed by Douglas rushkoff you can understand why software needs to be better and to be for people. I lived it by myself: internet, smartphone and mainstream software is becoming more and more hooking, less and less of an instrument and more and more of a tool to control people. I was addicted for years: a fragile person laying towards the shadow of a world that seemed to fully accept me, while it was using and taking out of me every drop of the little hope and energy i had instead.
I could work as a frontend webdev, I have all the skills I need to host WordPress or static websites on a VPS. I have some JavaScript base knowledge, I can use SCSS and HTML. And that would probably give me some very good extra income. I was even asked to work as a webdev but that never went on, I simply feel like I didn’t care enough and it kinda faded. (Probably most of people would think I am incredibly stupid, and probably I am).
So I asked myself: why do you program? What is the purpose? Why do I prefer to keep my very low income job instead of trying making some decent money with webdev? Why I decided to start learning Rust from zero again instead of focusing on something highly demanded like JavaScript? Why do I prefer to work for free on a free Hugo theme that can build thousands of websites (that would be payed decently) instead of selling the websites themselves?
I think I finally understand it now, it is because I suffered, and I suffered a lot.
I cannot bear someone else in the world suffering that kind of pain. And if I will be able to build, one day, software that helps someone else to come out of this dystopian matrix which is the current software landscape, to which i was so so ipnotized, I will be the happiest person in the world.
I will never be as skilled as an engineer, I will never understand the complicated maths behind coputer machines, I will also probably keep being very poor, and I will probably never change the world. But I feel like software right now lacks humanity, lacks emotion, and since I feel I have so much of both and some skills on it, it is my duty to at least try to do something as difficult as trying to put both of them into my development. There are probably countless super skilled engineers working for big techs, but how many of them put their full hearth into what they are doing?
This is why I program, and it can be ad painful as fulfilling at the same time, other than extremely hard in a not very rewarding approach.
Why you do it?
Worked manual jobs (assembly line) right out of highschool (well fast food during highschool too), and absolutely hated how boring it was to me. I’m not a social person, and used to have really bad social anxiety. I’ve always had an interest in computers, for whatever reason, so after a few years of manual labor, decided to go to college for that. Also, I lived in a very depressed area, and the jobs I had were very low paying, to the point I couldn’t afford to move out from my parents, so something had to change.
Anyways, I made the right choice, because I’m pretty good at what I do, and I love encountering and solving difficult problems.
While in college, I did work at a metal fab shop for a summer, and I could’ve totally seen myself doing that as well. It wasn’t mind-numbing like assembly line work, did involve problem solving, and the tools and machines were “cool.”
I like to tinker, I like to implement and improve things for myself, I like the idea of collaborative and public good efforts being to the advantage of everyone, I’m a very good systematic and structured thinker, I like learning, I’m good at it, I like efficiency, I like creativity, I like some stuff that you can get out of it. And for better or worse; honestly worse; I have nothing “better” to do, so I end up with projects even after work.
It was not a conscious decision to get into it. I slid into it. Using software and web, contributing content, changing websites, themes, game scripting, hosting, and then more and more development.
I can certainly understand and relate to loneliness within the job. I’ve been fully remote for a long time now, with social anxiety, which at the same time makes it more sustainable but also not a good or healthy situation.
I’m lucky to have a very small and good team, work environment, and customer. Such a good situation makes it hard to leave as well.
Because I want to be a God.
It’s a bit of hyperbole, but I was using some program on my pc and was frustrated because it didn’t do things I wanted it to do. Or it had bugs, and there was no way for me to get that changed, so I was left to pray that somehow the creator would find this small problem and fix it. I was envious of those people that could make these windows with buttons that made things happen. I wanted this power that transcended what I could see on my screen, and change how that world worked.
And so, I learned to program. I took the powers to shaped my own creations and ascended.
praise thy
It’s the perfect match and balance between engineering, creativity and fast iteration
Why do people chose a lonely job?
There’s an implicit bias in society that “extroverts are healthy” and “introverts are lonely and just need to open up more”.
There are so many movies and shows about that nerdy iintrovert who learns to overcome their shyness and meet that “special someone” to have a more fulfilling (i.e. extroverted) life.
But it’s fine to not want those things. Some people prefer coding 'til the wee hours working on a program and chatting to people on IRC even if I do have an early class tomorrow mom!
In all seriousness, you probably meant no offense. I simply wanted to call your attention to it.
iintrovert who learns to overcome their shyness
I tend to distinguish between the two.
Shy: someone who fears social interactions.
Introvert: someone who doesn’t need (as much) social interactions, but doesn’t fear them.
I was concerned about the gap between climate science and policy. So, having learned to program as a kid, I made an interactive model to help bridge that gap, to let people experiment. This evolved over 25 years - recently moved to scala.js, still developing, not for money but because we have to keep trying to solve complex problems.
Masochism.
Edit after reading all that: i like computers in general and to program, been doing it since high-school. I just like it, maybe it’s the puzzle solving or that warm fuzzy feeling of finally solving a bug (and closing 3214 tabs in the browser). It’s also fun to see your software in use in real life by the “common people” (i work with POS software) and being able to point and say I did that. (without actually doing so for fear of stoning).
As for the social aspect: there is good software, you’re on lemmy, checkout other fediverse networks like mastodon or pixelfed, they’re all way friendlier than commercial socia… i’ll stop the pitch, i assume you know this by now. Most FOSS software tends to be “good” as well.
As for everything else i’m not a therapist and don’t know you so i won’t even try.
Actually game dev is quite a social thing. You are constantly communicating with people, having meetings, and pair programming is a thing. In fact one of the reasons I went solo is because I wanted to save my social energy for my free time.
Why I code? Well, it’s just a craft like any other, like drawing, gardening, or sewing. I used to work with wood actually as a child, but I never had enough material because it was expensive. On the computer I could create the same sort of stuff but for free. It’s fun to create.
Why you do it?
The pay range in my country varies between comfortably above a living wage and holy cow, that’s quite nice.
There’s a big difference between alone and lonely, at least for me. And I quite enjoy being alone for extended periods of time. So that’s not a con for me.
That aside, it’s what I’m good at. And it feels good to do something for a living that I’m good at.
In retrospect, probably because I’m on the spectrum and I found computers far easier to deal with than people.
Same. Just don’t become too good at it. Now I have to write whitepapers and participate in speaker panels at conferences. Ugh.
My imposter syndrome would never let me do that. I’m not good at this, I’m terrible, it’s just that 98% of the people I’ve worked with have been even worse, and that’s a terrifying realization.
solving puzzle after puzzle
That about sums it up for me. Figuring something out lets out the good brain chems. The opposite sucks, though, getting stuck on something, especially when it’s something small that I was just too tunnel visioned to see.
I wonder if you would get different answers if you split your question into two:
- Why do you program for yourself?
- Why do you choose programming as a profession?
- to do things the way i feel is correct and complete
- to do things the way management wants
I like to solve puzzles. Like landscaping or building with Lego or painting, it’s about getting that idea out of your head into a form that other people can share.
Very interesting take on the whole subject. Sorry to hear about your depression, but nice to that you made it through.
I started programming because I wanted to have software that didn’t exist and so I had to make it myself. The need (or strong desire) to have a piece of software is still one of the biggest reasons for me to keep working on stuff.
But as others said, I do like the challange. Also when I find a neat solution to a problem, it feels like bringing order to chaos, which is nice.
