I was still in middle school in the early 2010’s and I remember thinking how lucky I am to want to be a computer programmer for a career AND it happens to pay a lot of money.

Unfortunately many people today got into for the money and not the passion (or at least the passion and the money). Those people look for shortcuts and are generally unpleasant to work with, in my opinion.

Right - there are two types of people working as developers.

1) People who love programming, do it as a hobby, and love being in front of a computer all day.

2) People who doing it because it's a decent paying job, but have no passion (and probably therefore not much skill) for it, and the last thing they want when they clock off their job is to be back on a computer.

If you are from group 1) - getting paid to do your hobby, then being a developer is a great job, but if you are from group 2) I imagine it can be pretty miserable, especially if trying to debug complex problems, or faced with tasks pushing your capability.

“if I have to sit in front of a computer every day for the rest of my life I’ll kill myself.”

Heh. And then they go become a "real" engineer (mechanical, electrical, whatever), and end up sitting in front of a computer all day, dealing with poor UI and poorly designed SW because a lot of CAD tools are either built in-house or owned by monopolies who have no incentive to improve the experience.

I've lived both worlds.

https://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2016/Jan/code-monkey-or-cad-mon...

> I’ll never forget overhearing this quote from a fellow sophomore in the comp sci lab in college: “if I have to sit in front of a computer every day for the rest of my life I’ll kill myself.” Computer science is an interesting career choice for someone who hates computers and being with computers.

I went to college in the late 1990s at the height of the dotcom boom. Saw a bunch of people who had this same feeling.

Which made no sense to me b/c I loved programming so much that I would do my homework assignments ahead of time!

> I think the “get rich easy” reputation that software engineering gained somewhere around the 2010s really hurt the industry and a lot of people who are chasing the dollar.

Yup.

Also, "The Company is the Product," where the goal is to sell the company, and the end-users are just food for the prize hog.

Just start talking about improving software quality, or giving end-users more agency, privacy, and freedom, around here, and see the response.

OP is a decent article which just becomes fodder for the usual

1. I love my job because (1) CRUD apps are so immensely satisfying (2) turns out that optimizing ad metrics at FAANG was my innately-sought destiny (3) being acquired by GOOG is bitter-sweet because now my wife will complain that I am not retiring even though I can

2. As opposed to the normies that just have this job because they need a job

I am a mechanical engineer who browses hackernews, if you want to get up and move around get a mechanical engineering degree

Same. Maybe this AI text generator trend will bring salaries back down, the opportunists will leave for greener pastures and us mega-nerds will have the software-writing all to ourselves.

This is me too! Everything about writing code, running it, messing with Github, tinkering with my dotfiles, automations... even as a preschooler, I was always dissatisfied that my drawings didn't do anything. I feel astoundingly lucky to have a job I was born to do.

> I’ll never forget overhearing this quote from a fellow sophomore in the comp sci lab in college: “if I have to sit in front of a computer every day for the rest of my life I’ll kill myself.” Computer science is an interesting career choice for someone who hates computers and being with computers.

This was a discussion that came up a few times in College. I argued that with hyper-specialization, you can't satisfy a desirable balance of cerebral and manual work, socializing, and being outdoors. Pick your poison. I didn't want to do shift work at the bottom of a mine pit so here I am.

You can have flexibility in your free time to do something else. My father was always tired from shift-work and did basically nothing at leisure even as we grew up.

But sitting in front of computers isn't what computer science is about, and some of those students might have aspirations to change the HCI status quo.

Software engineering and computer science seem to have two strict criteria to consider and neither of them is the same sort of continuous, analog suffering as wearing large shoes or practicing shooting a basketball. These criteria are

1) can you solve hard problems? 2) do you want to continue solving hard problems?

At least to me it seems that those two things take more effort and willpower than anything else in software. So I don't think challenging a person about whether they would love to sit in front a computer all day is the right approach.

> The type of kid who was setting up Outlook betas in 6th grade to try the new features.

Oh man, this brings up memories of me being inordinately excited about Office 2007 when it was in beta. I was in elementary school.

And memories of staying up late reading my collection of outdated tech books (Borland C++, UNIX SVR4, HTML 4, and the MS-DOS 6.22 manual were the big ones). Initially learning about programming and UNIX from those books were extremely formative for how I view programming today, and I suspect that's given me quite a different perspective on a lot of things (especially things like HTML & CGI) than a lot of other folks in my age cohort.

> somewhere around the 2010s

It was there in the 90s

1) I LOVED computer science school

2) I really love certain aspects of being a software engineer.

3) I have definutely said Ill kill myself if I have to sit in front of a computer for my entire life

4) this job will afford me a future where I can retire at a reasonable age. Whereas a non-computer oriented alternative (the other career available to me was house painting) will not.

Therefore I will bear the monotony of sitting in front of a computer all day for a few decades

> Reading C++ for dummies even though I had untreated ADHD and couldn’t sit still long enough to get much past std::cout.

You may have lucked out. I also didn't get terribly far in that book, but I thought it was fairly weird when I tried to read it, and after majoring in CS in college and eventually reading some very good books on programming, I believe I was entirely justified in not liking that one.

> Computer science is an interesting career choice for someone who hates computers and being with computers.

Dijkstra famously wasn't exactly keen on computers.

True, teamblind.com shows how horrible people have become software engineers. no wonder software quality has become very bad

I think I relate with most of the things you've said, even with the ADHD part (not officially diagnosed, however) but what annoys me these days is the amount of work we have to do. The work is rewarding but very often just * too much *. Maybe I'm unlucky or maybe it is the companies I worked for...

> Computer science is an interesting career choice for someone who hates computers and being with computers.

Well, people who do real computer science don't program a lot, it's all theoretical math. Computer science has as much to do with computers as astronomy does with telescopes.

For the same reason i chose not to go into computer science, changed to a different degree after 1st year in college, best decision.

What you really need in life is financial independence and then you can choose what you want to do.

Wish you all financial independence.

I think there are a lot of people who liked programming until it became a job.

I actually find i tend to dislike non-programming computer activity. Love programming, but if someone suggests taking notes with a laptop instead of paper, my reaction is ewww computers.

> Computer science is an interesting career choice for someone who hates computers and being with computers.

Sometimes the interest just fades. What stimulated me at age 14 no longer does at age 36.