We are all human. Just because I don't understand why someone would spend their whole life studying beetles doesn't mean I don't respect that they find it engaging and worthwhile.

You are making the classic mistake of projection. Accept that people are unique and will find different things engaging even within the most "mundane" areas of software.

That seems like a harsh view. A lot of software isn't very glamorous or exciting at first glance, that's true. But if you're sufficiently intrigued by logic puzzles and the challenge of solving things elegantly, my guess is that even the most boring piece of software has some opportunity for fun buried in its architecture.

But since you don't seem to be able to relate that too much, maybe you are just motivated by other things than many programmers. What would be the 'actual fun' things then in your opinion, that you have to be 'socially successful' to participate in?

I like the optimism in your comment. I'm glad that we can appreciate things like this, the flexing of mental muscles in pursuit of a productive task.

Most jobs are boring if you aren’t interested in the problem they’re solving. I appreciate you throwing some shade at the otherwise hive mind here but you’ve kind of jumped to the opposite direction. I don’t find recording audio interesting but there’s a whole field about it and I assure you I know people who find the art of recording sounds interesting who aren’t “telling themselves” it isn’t just to keep from being depressed. People are interested in different things and programming, like math, is the art of abstract problem solving and there very much are millions of people who find the act of abstracting problems and automating their solutions interesting. Your comment is downvoted because you are claiming otherwise to a community full of these very people.

Sure programming is boring, to the billions of people who aren’t programmers just as recording audio or, for a “real world” type of fun like you imply, playing most sports, is boring to me.

Making a file manager sounds interesting. A customer service platform not so much because I've done it before. A payroll system could be interesting.

Typing a letter and having it show up interests me.

  What interests you?

I don't understand this. You make it sound as if other trades and professions are about getting invited to parties.

Other professions arent as technical, and focus more on creating human connections rather than abstract connections.

- Accounting? - Finance? - Law? I dunno, I think this notion that software development is uniquely technical is pretty misguided.

This is really right on the mark. Real accounting involving trusts, tax shelters involving various corporate structures, the intricate tax code knowledge required to understand and take advantage of loopholes is quite technical.

Having been exposed to what it takes to do this level of accounting via direct conversations with someone who does this, they can't wait to move on from it. It's not a good fit for their personality. It really is a back office type of work that can get quite lonely.

You’re partly right, programming as a whole and on a sort of macro level is soils crushingly boring and pointless. But on the micro scale, even boring pointless programming tasks can offer challenges that are interesting enough to keep you entertained for a few hours until you look up and remember how pointless it all is.

I like to compare it to solving sudoku. If that entertains you and you can make 200k doing it, it’s not the worst thing in the world, even if it is sad and boring when you see it in a wider context. Who wants to go through life as a programmer?

Some people just have great interest in a narrow area.

I agree that most of those types of applications have a very low interest-to-drudgery ratio just in general, and I personally don't find them interesting at all. But let's not forget that some people just have interest in the details of things that most other people don't really care about. Some of that work might not even be objectively that technically demanding, yet it somehow catches the attention of some people.

> It’s boring and people only do it because they’re too socially unsuccessful to participate in things that are actually fun,

To throw some bombs the other way, I think there's a legit feeling that a lot of the socialization/fun that humanity gets up to is frivolous, pointless, dis-engaged, solipsistic avoidance of how they are spending their lives. We are all engaged in distracting ourselves at some level (Terror Management Theory[1]), and while it is popularly accepted that being popular & social is how one wins, I think there have been a lot of folks who feel other callings, to do, to make, to explore, and often it's less than clear how to do these activities socially. Einstein only found two other people in the world when he made the Olympia Academy[1], but that was enough. Other people wouldn't call that social fun, but it engaged him, and I would judge more earnestly & wholly & to greater joy than most people's social fun.

> so they convince themselves spending hundreds of hours making boring stuff is actually a good use of their time. I understand that some programming is great, but since 99% of all software is not interesting, I don’t believe the amount of people who say they love it.

I'm much more sympathetic to this all. So much of my first post was about the split, the difficulty, of doing software development from within the confines of the corporate-industrial environment.

There are endless fun challenges & explorations to get up to (from within those confines). There's so many things that feel good about programming, about feeling like one has gotten on top of these confounding complex problems, & built a secure well structured coherent domain for oneself. I think there is fun here, genuine fun, but I also think it's distracting & shallow. It's the social gossip of software development. Decoupled from what one is doing.

Most software is, alas, built in corporate-industrial manner. Most programmers are merely producers, not imaginators, not true creators, very much by design of the corporate-industrial system, & it's accepted as 99.999% hard fact that programmers need the help of other people or else they will make horrible software that won't help users. Very little software that is written, I would say, is written by software. This wraps up into the whole corporate-industrial software problem, that software is always intent on being product, on consumerization, and I strongly feel it's the lack of trust & lack of exploration that keeps 99% of software in the not-interesting realm, that keeps computers as a whole impervious & uninteresting & uncompelling & unknown (the proverbial kids who know a couple apps really well but nothing more about computing).

Most of the programmers you meet, who you accuse of not being passionate: perhaps you are right. They're having fun, but how engaged are they? Are they avoiding the fear of death, engaging themselves in industrial fun? Or do they really have a passion, see the world truly, have some sense of place of it all, & feel a connection to something? Are they facing the terror of death earnestly, more genuinely; have they advanced beyond the socializing masses? I think your doubts are well founded. I think we ought be critical, try to keep a cosmic brain view & skepticism, of ourselves & our applications.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympia_Academy

The consumerist cycle is indeed a vicious trap in some ways when we place it in the context of self-actualisation. I’d like to add that another component or alternative to Terror thinking is our scarcity thinking. We still all live like we need to hoard nuts like Scrat from Ice Age.

A reasonable solution is the Sublime from Schopenhauer, or an alternative enlightened moment in once life were one does indeed she ourselves part of a Cosmic whole. Or otherwise said from that movie “What we do in life, echoes in eternity.”

Sure there are people with higher callings, geniuses like Einstein or Newton. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We are talking about moderately intelligent people who will never contribute anything meaningful to humanity. For them work is not an excuse not to have friends or do “frivolous” things. Those frivolous things are what life are made of, so you better have a damn good reason if you avoid them. Being 10% of a team that is building some accounting software is not comparable to inventing calculus.

> We are talking about moderately intelligent people who will never contribute anything meaningful to humanity.

I have to disagree here. The bulk of humanity consists of minor contributions made by people few will ever remember.

Yes and the bulk of humanity manage to both make this minute contribution, and have a family and some friends.

You can be a software developer and have a family and friends. You're acting like there is only one choice when you are passionate about software : hunker down and be lonely with your computer as your only company.

That is the point _I_ am making.