Coding is fun

Coding is often seen as a difficult and boring task, and it can be intimidating for beginners. However, in my experience, changing my mindset about programming and making it a hobby has made all the difference in my journey as a coder.

Starting out

I was 15 when I wrote my first piece of code. 15 is not an impressive age to start coding then or even now. Especially since more and more people have started to code at the age of 10 or even younger. You definitely would have seen those YouTube videos titled "Meet the youngest app developer on the Apple App Store" or something similar.

When I started out, I would scroll on Reddit and try to find pieces of code that other people have written, and try to run it. Usually it didn't work, and I would be given a huge error message that did not make any sense to me at the time.

Fast forward 9 years and now I mainly code in a different language as to what I started with, and probably for the better.

That put's a lot of things into perspective hmm...

Coding as a creative craft

I always thought programming was supposed to be difficult and boring. Actually, I had to mentally prepare myself to start coding cause sometimes opening the code editor gave me anxiety.

Then I realized something. Programming is not studying. Studying is boring and hard. Programming is a creative craft. It's like, drawing, making music, and even gaming. You're making value out of thin air.

Looking at programming as one of my hobbies, changed my entire mindset from "coding is hard" to "coding is actually really fun - even if it can be super hard sometimes".

Making Programming a Hobby

As soon as I saw coding as a hobby that I can level up in, I started learning more about programming communities, new tech and even CS concepts I can use, it actually made me more passionate programming and computer science. Because like most people, I was brought into the field for the money and job security (AI is coming after my job).

Now when I have to study something for programming, its now fun cause I can learn and use new concepts later on when I'm coding my projects.

Making programming a hobby made the experience of learning to learn to code a lot more casual and fun. And more importantly, it got me to code every single day. Obviously don't treat it as a hobby when you're coding for work. But having it as a hobby and seeing it as one while you're still learning can take a lot of the pressure away and replace it with fun.

Now, how do I do that?

I find an area of programming that I love. It could be anything from doing coding challenges from LeetCode, math puzzles and writing small scripts. My favorite thing to do is cloning other popular websites.

Balancing hobby and work coding

I have been coding professionally for over 5 years now. My livelihood depends on it. I do not balance my hobby and work coding at all. And it frustrates me every day.

Work

Coding for work, for me at least, it not fun at all. While coding for work also makes you learn new things to complete a project, most of the time, parts of the code I write are extremely repetitive.

All clients want the same things. Having to write this repetitive code over and over again for over 20, maybe 30 projects (I'm sure its not 30, but you get my point), is something that bores me faster than I can say "programming".

The repetitive coding is usually at the begining of the project, and is also the time I am most pumped about it. I want to get right into the good stuff.

The repetitive tasks could be deferred to an existing solution, or I could even make my own. But with deliverables to meet and tight deadlines, copy pasting code from previous projects and making it work, is much faster than spending some time writing new code to make my life easier.

At least sometimes.

When I do get to the good stuff, it takes me a lot longer than it should to get into the grove and actually start being productive.

Hobby

This doesn't happen when I'm coding as a hobby. Coding as a hobby does not have repetitive work, because more often than not, I'm doing something completely new from the ground up. Doing something new every time and every day keeps my brain active and forces me to think ahead.

I would be writing some code, and then I'd completely scratch it and write it again, because I found out how to make it better. I can't do this with work, because like I said, the repetitiveness bores me.

Coding as a hobby is by far my favortie thing to do. But when I get into the grove, coding for work is so mentally draining, I've stopped coding as a hobby, for the most part.

So now what?

None of this means that I'm looking for a career change. I love programming, and I don't regret it at all. I don't code as a hobby as much because I've started playing video games more and more during my free time. I could easily start coding as a hobby again, but why would I do that when I can play competitive video games with random Indians on my team and start using slurs in the voice chat.

Coding is fun, because of all the learning I have to do in the process.