About a year ago, I was out to dinner with a friend of mine and we were discussing how (against our better judgement, perhaps) we really missed being in school. Not for the exams, or homework, or GPA-induced pressures, but because we missed learning.
At this same time, I was working as an Associate Producer at a small video game studio and getting ramped up on a project that would require me to learn how to use Unity and write some simple Lua. This task was not exactly within my job description as a project manager, but it was through this project that I really began to understand that coding is a skill that requires constant learning. The ups and downs of learning something new, getting stuck, and then learning something new to get unstuck was something that spoke directly to my desire to grow and gain new skills that school and college had once satiated.
I started to do some self-directed learning outside of work, mostly focused on HTML and CSS. I found myself losing huge chunks of time totally engrossed in making cute mini websites for myself. One of my favorite things to do is acquire new hobbies (another perk of being a developer is the financial stability it provides that allows people to explore their personal tech and non-tech hobbies), and this felt like the ultimate hobby to take up.
At that same job, I had wonderful colleagues who saw my passing interesting in coding, and encouraged me in it. At a certain point, the interest became less of a passing one, but rather one I wanted to pursue full time. So, here I am at the start of that journey-- I can't wait to see where it takes me!
Top comments (1)
Game development is a pretty rough industry on game devs. Typical burnout rate is 3-5 years. But there are an unlimited number of paths to take in software development, so go with whatever interests you!
I think the best programs are the short ones that automate my own solutions to problems I encounter in my daily life. Basically, weekend warrior projects where the result is a few hundred lines of code that are my own custom solution to a particular problem I ran into. Larger projects requiring 3 months or more to reach completion tend to chew up a lot of time and are generally less satisfying - in my experience, I'll mostly breathe a sigh of relief at getting the project done but that's about it. I still consider the work valuable but the personal satisfaction and excitement start to fade about 3 months in.