I no longer build software

Re:I no longer build software by chubot on Monday September 21, 2020 @12:50PM (#24545604)

I totally understand people who are burnt out on building commercial software. The incentives are often to create systems that work poorly for both users and are hard to work with for developers. It's a miracle when that's not true!

However if you're really burnt out, and still want to exercise your skill, take a break and give open source software a try! I'm still having fun building http://www.oilshell.org/ after many years.

If you're building it for yourself, open source software can be fun, and it should have the side effect of being useful to some others as well.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:I no longer build software by someguydave on Monday September 21, 2020 @05:09PM (#24548510)

How do you make money? Do you live on savings?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:I no longer build software by chubot on Monday September 21, 2020 @06:56PM (#24549299)

Yes, although I worked on open source while employed for 6-10 years too (sometimes it was my job, but usually not).

I'm not saying that it's the way to spend the least time at the computer :) I'm saying it is a way to avoid being burnt out.

If you are building something for yourself, and others incidentally get some use out of it, you'll be less likely to burnt out than killing yourself for a deadline made-up by a VP. And then the whole project gets through away, and no customer ever cared about it. I've seen that a lot.

-----

Related story: Many years ago I got burnt out by my job, and I took a woodworking class at night (lol, definitely a programmer thing). It was great, and I'm typing on top of a desk I made in that class right now.

However I bought a bunch of magazines about woodworking, and I noticed that everyone had 8 or 9 fingers, so I didn't go further with it :) The thing that the OP pointed out is real!

[ Parent | on HN ]