The end of the year is coming, and for me it’s always a time of reflection. I’d like to invite you to ask yourself one simple question.
Imagine that from January, the IT job market simply stops existing. No more well-paid jobs, no more “career in tech”. Programming becomes just a hobby.
Do you keep coding?
Or do you throw it all away and say “I’m done”? 😅
To be honest, my own answer isn’t that simple. I’ve technically been coding “forever” — I wrote my first website when I was 12, back in glorious HTML 4.01 😎 But programming has always been more of a medium of expression for me than a goal in itself.
Over the years, my approach to coding has evolved a lot — maybe you’ll recognize yourself somewhere on this spectrum 👇
🔹 First, there was curiosity
How does this even work? Why does something show up on the screen? How does the internet work? How do you build your own website?
That curiosity is still there. I love exploring new technologies and playing with things.
But let’s be honest… curiosity doesn’t pay the bills 😉
🔹 Then came the money phase 💸
If I already have this skill, why not make a career out of it?
I still remember my first manager laughing when, after my internship, he asked about my career plans and I said:
“Well… I don’t really have any. I just wanted to become a junior developer and I did it.” 😄
Luckily he was a great guy and helped me figure out what to do next.
🔹 Then I went full tech-fangirl mode 🤓
New stacks! New frameworks! No legacy ever!
It didn’t really matter what the project did — NGO app or cigarette factory system — what mattered was ANGULAR/REACT/VUE (delete as appropriate 😂). Definitely the newest store management, the newest tools, shiny everything.
I never reached the “I’ll build the worst garbage as long as it pays” mindset… but yeah, once I had the skills and leverage, I negotiated my rates pretty hard 😉
🔹 And then… the famous “what now?” stage
You know the one.
I’m not building a revolutionary product. I’m not inventing a new framework. I’m not writing a browser engine. I’m not a startup founder.
I work in regular enterprise Angular. Problems start feeling repetitive, pressure grows, everything “has already been done”, expectations rise.
Yep. That’s a very comfy road straight to burnout 🥲
🔹 So I had to figure things out
I didn’t want to leave tech — I genuinely like programming.
So I decided: if I’m spending 8 hours a day coding anyway, those 8 hours better mean something.
Since then, whenever I changed jobs, I paid a lot more attention to the project itself. It needed to tick at least one (ideally both) boxes:
- interesting technology
- social impact / meaningful purpose
Thanks to that, I’ve helped build a Fair Trade certification platform, software for retirement homes, hospital equipment management tools, worked in anti–money laundering, and now I work for the European Commission on a huge socially important project. And I can even visit Brussels a few times a year. 🥰
And yeah — work is still work. We joke, gossip, talk about the gym, complain, drink coffee. Nothing magical 😅
But if every job more or less feels the same, and I can choose the kind of work I do… why not choose something that actually contributes something good to the world? 🌍
So now I’m curious:
👉 Why do you code?
What’s your motivation today?
Would you still do it if programming was only a hobby?
Share your thoughts — I’d love to read your stories! 💬
Top comments (83)
You lucky girl! You have the luxury of choosing your missions — and of course, you clearly earned it.
Side note: HTML 4.01? Seriously? 😄 You’re almost a dinosaur.
As for me, coding is, in one way or another, part of my DNA. Designing, building, deploying… I have as much fun as I work. And even if tech stopped paying tomorrow, I’d still code — for myself, for the pure joy of it. I’d find another way to make a living, but I’d never stop writing code.
Haha, yes, almost a dinosaur indeed! Back then nobody was using fancy stuff like CSS — simpler, chaotic, beautiful times 😄
And you’re absolutely right: I really do have the luxury of choosing meaningful projects, and I’m very aware it’s not something everyone in tech can do, especially with the current state of the market. It’s a privilege, and I don’t take it for granted.
I love what you wrote about coding being part of your DNA. That’s such an amazing place to be — having something so deeply yours, something constant no matter what happens around you. That kind of passion is powerful 💛
Haha, exactly — chaotic, simple, and somehow beautiful indeed 😄
Sometimes I think we underestimate how much those “rough” beginnings shaped the way we think and build today.
And I really appreciate how consciously you talk about privilege. Being aware of it — and choosing meaningful projects because of it — is already a way of giving something back.
As for coding being part of my DNA… I guess it’s what keeps things stable when everything else shifts. Markets change, tools change, trends come and go — but that inner drive stays. And sharing that kind of passion with others makes it even stronger 💛
That’s really beautiful — and I’ll admit, I’m a little jealous of that kind of clarity 😊
I absolutely love IT, and this industry has welcomed me like I’ve always belonged here (especially since I didn’t start my career in tech originally). But… is it “forever”? I don’t know yet. Time will tell!
For now, I’m grateful to be here, to build meaningful things, and to share conversations like this one 💛
Me too!
I didn't start coding to build apps. I started coding to build ground. I coded because the external world was breaking apart, and I needed at least one system where the logic held. It's the same emotional architecture I bring to everything: when the macro-system destabilizes, I build a micro-system with rules I can trust. Code becomes a kind of emotional physics—predictable, responsive, alterable. A place where cause and effect still obey me.
Coding, for me, wasn't about "learning to program." It was about reasserting coherence. A private world where:
• things don't shatter without explanation,
• systems behave according to principles,
• and I can rebuild what breaks.
Thank you so much for this - truly. I completely understand what you mean. When the world feels like it’s falling apart, returning to logic, structure, and - let’s say it openly - a sense of control can be incredibly grounding. Being able to make something behave, respond, and hold together when everything else doesn’t… that really can be a lifeline.
I experienced something similar this year, though in my case I turned more toward creativity and writing - and surprisingly, it worked in almost the same way. It rebuilt coherence, gave me space to breathe, and made the world feel a little less chaotic again 💛
So well articulated. I changed careers a while back for all of these reasons x
So now I’m really curious what comes next for us 😄
I absolutely 💯 love that!!!!!!! Merch that outlook sumhow,wat u just conveyed many ppl resonate with n its compellingly fact based on many levels...merch meme that outlook/philosophy/life standard before someone else does! Even if u don't have a company,pretend like u do lol meme u come up w hasto b catchy,I kno ull make it great,best of luck
This means a lot—thank you. I wasn’t expecting the post to resonate like that, but your comment reminded me that emotional architecture can be merchandised, not just theorized. I’m already sketching ideas. Appreciate the push. You can check out my shop: etsy.com/shop/cybersecuritywitwear
Not a hard question for me, because I want to keep on learning.
I come from the time personal computers at home were not a thing until I was in my late teens.
My first encounter with code was translating XML documentation. And from there I rolled into PHP.
Then I did a Visual basic side quest, but after that it was back into PHP, with flash this time.
Used multiple frameworks and landed on Symfony as my goto.
Then I did perl, java, clojure, C# and go. Went to multiple tech conferences. All just to keep on learning.
Nowadays the learning has more to do with creating the most simple code for the most complex requirements. And teaching others to do the same.
At work it is learning how to communicate to create a product all parties are satisfied with.
The greatest thing about programming is that it is still evolving. And as long as it is evolving there are things to learn.
Thanks so much for your comment! It sounds like endless learning is really what drives you - and yes, if that’s the case, you’re definitely in the right industry 😄
And I totally agree: in tech we don’t just learn “code”. We learn architecture, communication, collaboration, how to simplify complexity… it’s a whole spectrum of growth.
Interestingly, for me programming isn’t so much about infinite learning, but more about infinite creative possibilities. And I love that one field can hold so many different motivations and ways to find meaning. That’s kind of beautiful 😊
Burnout is everywhere — not because people hate tech, but because corporate reality can grind the joy out of it.
I’ve spent ~20 years in testing, often deep inside over-engineered legacy systems. Somewhere along the way I learned to keep my passion separate from the corporate layer: work is work, but curiosity is mine.
That’s why I still get excited about ideas and new tech — and why I’d keep coding even if it wasn’t a career.
That’s a really healthy way to look at it. I feel something similar - my passion and curiosity don’t always align with what I do at work, and that’s okay. As I wrote in the article… curiosity unfortunately doesn’t pay the bills 😄 But keeping that personal spark separate can really help protect it.
I wrote my first code when I was 16 and since then I was fairly involved in tech but my main focus and hobby at that time was math, I wanted to become a mathematician as I've always loved Math, coding was secondary for me, though i did write alot of stuff...
During my senior year in high school, I was teaching Calc 2 to a few close friends, my passion for Math was still strong but I've never really abandoned coding too.. same time I met my gf who I'm gonna marry very soon, my high school sweet heart.
My parents did not approve of my decision of me being with my gf so I ran away and had to think fast so I decided to drop Math to just a hobby and prioritize programming, AI wasn't really advanced yet during that time so like every other traditional dev, I learnt through books, stack overflows, breaking and fixing things to learn. it took me about 2 months before I finally landed a junior position at a FinTech company, mainly working on backend.
It was during this time when I discovered so much beauty than to just writing some python code to generate and solve mathematical problems, I realized that I wanted to build products, systems and libraries to solve both business and developers' problems.
The feeling of knowing that your system is currently carrying and holding hundreds of thousands of concurrent requests of hundreds of thousands of users is euphoric to me - the feeling of knowing, even just 2 developers, using my library to help boost their productivity or solve their problems, that's my heaven
I love solving edge cases in code, seeing outside the picture - what is really going on that's causing this or that, I just want to know HOW and WHY does THIS happen in code and when I found the answer, it's a great feeling for me...
and by the way, I actually took programming only because I wanted to reduce workload on my gf's, she was working double shifts so I wanted her to get some rest and I decided to pick this career to support her financially and turns out, it not only relieved her, it benefited me and it's become heaven for me as well.
I'm nearly 6 years into the industry now, I am leading a team of 8 people and I am happy that my team grows and I learn from them every day.
If one day the tech industry just happen to die? I am still coding no matter what.
Wow, what an absolutely touching story - it honestly reads like a movie ❤️ Thank you so much for sharing it. It’s beautiful how you temporarily pushed your original passion aside to support the person you love… and somehow ended up finding an even bigger one along the way. That’s incredibly powerful.
And I completely get that feeling you describe - even if just two people use what you build, it already means so much. I always think the same when writing: even if 30 people read an article, that’s basically a small workshop room already, and that’s amazing 😊
But I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t poke a little deeper, because I’ve been in this very “meta” mindset lately 😄 Reading your story, I couldn’t help but wonder:
isn’t coding for you… kind of the same thing that math used to be?
When you talk about the beauty of systems, edge cases, structure, understanding how and why things happen - it sounds like the same fundamental curiosity and love of patterns, just expressed through a different medium. Maybe programming simply became the most powerful and rewarding way to express the same part of your mind at this stage of your life.
And then I wonder… if you had become something like an engineer building machines instead, would you maybe have discovered the same sense of order, harmony and meaning there too? That’s such a fascinating thought 🤯
Absolutely loved your story - thank you again for sharing it!
I suppose so, yeah. It’s not programming itself that I’m really into - it’s problem-solving.
Programming offers problem models very similar to mathematics: you’re given a problem, there are many possible solutions, and the “right” one depends heavily on context and use cases. and I have thought of becoming an engineer but then, whenever I think about it, a piece of my heart that belongs to programming would go: " ...but in the next 3 years, how are you gonna catch up?? " or " how will you know how do future systems handle trillions of data being transferred, processed or consumed? " haha
Anyway, the reply's tad bit late I know, sorry haha, it's been a busy week and all the war's going on too.
we are all robots 🤖
so we replicate robot behavior, our self
I don’t think so 😄 No robot would ever create the kind of glorious spaghetti code we humans manage to produce 🤖🍝
Just to remind you - every cell is a self-repairing and self-replicating robot. Every cell has the whole code of life.
Ha, fair point! So by building AI we're building Ultimate Intelligence, like in Dan Simmons' "Hyperion" 😅
AI can't think 🤔 AI is a statistical model
we can't create an artificial consciousness, that's impossible 🙅
we are the sentient creators, our creations are always one dimension lower
our virtual reality is 3D (time is an illusion of change), our creations are 2D (monitor for 3D games is flat), VR is twice flat 😂
What's with art, like sculptures?
Great insight
Thanks sylwia 💯 happy new year 🎊
Thanks, Aaron! 🎉 Happy New Year to you too - wishing you an amazing 2025! 😊
For me it’s actually a simple question.
Coding is a way of solving problems that, in hindsight, everyone eventually accepts as “normal.”
You start with something vague—an idea, a need, a problem with no clear solution. Then you break it down into smaller steps, structure those steps, and rebuild them into a path that actually works.
Humans have always done this. Centuries ago it showed up as wheels, carts, machines, cars, airplanes.
The computer era just made it easier. We can now solve incredibly complex problems with our hands on a keyboard. And coding is simply the language that lets computers understand the structure of those solutions.
I really love this perspective - especially how you connect problem-solving in code to the long human history of building tools and systems 😊
What’s interesting is that my own view is almost the opposite in a way: for me, programming feels more like creation than problem-solving - an act of making something new, which is also deeply human and very old.
And I think that’s what’s so beautiful about this field: the same craft can fulfill completely different human needs - logic, structure, curiosity, creativity, meaning. There’s room for all of it, and that’s kind of amazing 💛
We loved your post so we shared it on social.
Keep up the great work!
Some comments may only be visible to logged-in visitors. Sign in to view all comments.