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 tha...
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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!
Your article made me pause because my answer to “Why do you code?” took years to become clear.
I’ve always been a researcher at heart. For as long as I can remember, I spend more than half of my waking hours browsing, reading, observing interfaces, patterns, layouts, UX and UI decisions — basically living inside the web whenever I’m not doing the basics of daily life. Curiosity was never the problem.
The problem was execution.
I first touched code around 2005, writing a few prompts that loaded in Internet Explorer. It didn’t last. Not because I lost interest, but because I couldn’t translate what I understood conceptually into working code. So I stayed close to the web — studying it, not building it.
That changed much later. Around 2021–2022, when AI assistants started appearing in everyday tools (the first thing I asked Meta on WhatsApp was simply: “Can you code?”), something clicked. For the first time, the barrier between thinking and building thinned enough for me to cross.
Now I love web apps — not because everyone around me does (they don’t), but because they finally let me express years of accumulated observation and research. I’m drawn to automation, usefulness, and systems that quietly solve problems. Even if money disappeared from the equation, I’d still build — until the usefulness becomes obvious.
I used to joke that I was born too early. My friends laughed. Turns out I might have just been waiting for the right tools.
Thanks for asking a deceptively hard question — it helped me answer it honestly.
Thank you so much for this comment - I completely get that deep fascination with the web 😊 I’ve had a phase like that too: lots of reading, watching, observing… but not much actual coding. Or coding that didn’t really “work” the way I wanted it to.
At some point (long before AI assistants existed 😄) I gave myself a challenge: stop reading theory for a while and just code. Only look things up when they were directly needed for what I was building. That changed a lot for me - suddenly it became about doing, not just understanding.
And you’re absolutely right: today the barrier to execution is so much lower. You don’t have to hunt for scattered knowledge across the internet anymore, and that’s a good thing! It lets people focus on solving problems instead of reinventing the wheel from scratch all the time. Tools evolving to empower more creators is genuinely beautiful, I think.
I’m really rooting for whatever you build next - wishing you lots of exciting, meaningful projects ahead 🚀
The contributing to the world thing definitely got me. I used to work for agencies where I'd be supporting all sorts of companies that weren't doing anything positive for people (or the environment). Now I work for a charity full-time and everything's so much nicer.
Thanks for this post.
My answer? Well it is not simple either, i started coding after ~ 20 years of non-coding career. But i always loved tech and worked in tech, in development of big systems.
I was no stranger to creating something from scratch.
I just wanted to handle it myself, live in the kitchen. the joy of writing something to terminal or editor and then seeing it be realized to live, is amazing.
So i guess it is ambition.
And my next is, be a better developer each day/week.
But what you specified, "creating something meaningful" resonates so deep in me, that is why i have been exploring open source projects and working on some more "meaningful" ideas..
Way to go in all of them.
happy new year.
Thank you so much for this comment - I loved reading it 😊
Oh yes, I remember that joy so clearly too: typing something into a terminal or editor and then boom, it appears on the screen and actually does something. Pure magic at the beginning.
Maybe that’s why I gravitated so much toward frontend - I love seeing things immediately come alive visually 😄 With backend I always laugh a bit like: I expose an API and… that’s it? Where’s my fireworks? 😂
And I totally agree with you: if we want to work on something meaningful, it doesn’t have to happen only at work. There’s open source, mentoring, community work, personal projects… even a few hours a week or a month can make a difference. There are so many possibilities! 💛
Motivation today(and the last 2 yrs) : Get those tech I've chosen to learn into my head, proper!
Still programming if only a hobby : yes, as i'm doing so now :D In fact, the only thing that gets me out of bed really. hehe
Since leaving my last role, i've enjoyed programming more than before, venturing into different stacks. Used to not want to spend more than commissioned hours tied to the desk facing the monitor. But since doing my own thing, i've dedicated at least 12 hours daily on the deskbound-monitor relationship willingly, very odd! lol!
That’s such an interesting observation! 😄 I totally get it though - whenever I work on my own projects, I can easily lose track of time too. Wishing you lots of success with learning, growing, and finding the right role ahead! 🚀
Here's my story:
I started programming way back in 1984 - simply because I wanted computers to do what I want.
In 1994 I created my first website. In 1995 I started using JS. In 1997 I invented a jsonp-like function to communicate with servers. I administred a research windows NT-4 server cluster, so I programmed JS server side (first the excellent Netscape server, later ASP/JScript). Especially the client side of web development often was a menace because of the lack of standardization.
The first godsend was JQuery. The second godsend was NodeJS, since JScript was not maintained anymore.
In 2005 I switched from research to full time developer for a complex educational system.
I've seen JS grow from a fairly limited, error prone and despised (by people calling themselves 'real programmers') language to a full fledged programming language meeting nearly all the needs one can wish. I was never very interested in frameworks. The framework-like stuff I needed I programmed myself.
Nowadays I'm retired, but I keep developing open source modules/libraries for the web developer community. A few years ago I started programming JS in a Class Free Object Oriented way and never looked back. Besides that, I'm teaching JS.
I keep programming because I'm insatiable curious and I like the satisfaction of learning new things and solving hard problems. I hope AI doesn't spoil the latter in the longer term ...
Cheers!
Thank you so much for sharing this - what an incredible journey! 😊
You actually started programming before I was even born 😄 That’s real passion right there. Huge respect for staying in love with the craft for so many decades, and even more for continuing to build and teach, even in retirement. That’s truly inspiring.
And I totally remember the time when JavaScript was looked down on. When I started playing with coding in the 2000s, a lot of “smart people” were saying there was no point learning JS because “everything worth building in it has already been written” 😄 I really wonder what they think about their predictions now!
Thanks again - reading stories like yours is exactly why I love the internet 💛
Thank you for putting this into words - your journey from curiosity to finding meaningful work perfectly mirrors my own career arc. That 'what now?' stage is so real, and your choice to focus on projects with purpose is genuinely inspiring.
Thank you so much - I’m really glad it resonated with you! That “what now?” phase is so real, and it’s comforting to know others went through the same arc too. Wishing you lots of meaningful projects ahead 😊
omg HTML... I still have to use it believe it or not... One of the applications I work with use and "advanced pdf" print form feature. Anytime someone wants to customize the form, I have to go in and dust off the HTML skills... lol
Hahaha I love this so much 😄
I’ve totally been there! In one of my projects we also had this magical “advanced PDF creator” - and we were doing such ridiculous HTML hacks in there that we literally created an internal “Golden Spackle Award” for outstanding achievements in… fixing things that should never have worked in the first place 😂 Not sure it sounds as poetic in English, but the spirit was definitely there!
And in my previous company the design team once asked me to create a “simple email footer”. I thought it would take like… 20 minutes. Long story short: after sending something like footer_final_final_v3 I ended up creating a GitHub repo for it 🤣
Right!?! Totally same thing!! It blew my mind. Like, I’m having to do all this extra work in a 30 year old coding language that like 4 people still use… Most don’t even know what it is or that still exists in modern applications… 🤣
Hahaha oh absolutely 🤣 I’m pretty sure it’s not 4 people… it’s at least 10 - the brave souls still building serious email layouts in pure HTML 😄
Wild that in the 21st century we’re still doing archaeological coding like this. May the tech gods protect them 🙏😂
To make money because my laptop is 12 years old and I want to buy a new device so that I can do bigger projects and experience the feeling of playing new games
Hahaha I totally feel that 😄
When I was learning to code I also had an absolutely ancient laptop - so I fully respect the “upgrade motivation” path 😂
Good luck, may the new device and great projects (and games!) come soon! 🎮🚀
For me, coding started (and still mostly stays) as a way to build things the way I want them built.
I’ve always liked creating systems, tools, and small worlds, and programming just happens to be the most flexible medium for that. The part I enjoy most isn’t “coding” in isolation, it’s the control: being able to shape the entire thing end to end instead of adjusting myself to someone else’s constraints.
Sometimes I look at existing tools or platforms and think, “I could probably live with this”… and then immediately think, “or I could just make my own and have it behave exactly the way I want.” That urge is hard to switch off.
That said, I’d be lying if I said money didn’t matter. I’m very much in that phase too, it’s a solid place to start a career, and it gives leverage and optionality. There are days when the frustration makes me wonder if I’d still do this if it were only a hobby.
But interestingly, even on those days, I still end up coding, just for myself. Small scripts, tools to simplify my life, experiments that don’t need to be “useful” to anyone else. That’s when it feels closest to why I started: building because I can, not because I have to.
So I guess my answer is: I code because it lets me turn ideas into real, usable things, and the more autonomy I have over the whole system, the more it feels like creativity rather than work.
Thank you so much for this comment - I really loved reading it 😊
I especially love how you describe coding as simply the most flexible medium available right now. I feel exactly the same. It gives so much mental freedom - because even if one day AI takes over the entire industry and programming as a job disappears 😄 we’ll still be able to transfer that way of thinking and “system-building mindset” somewhere else.
Your take on building systems is fascinating - not just coding for the sake of code, but shaping little worlds end-to-end. I resonate with that a lot. Sometimes I also think, “maybe I should pick a different hobby, the world has so many interesting things to offer” - and then somehow I end up… coding something small just for myself anyway 😄
Really loved your perspective!
Today I build apps to help me in life and maybe help someone else who has the same problem I fixed using code. also it makes good money, and it's a fun hobby
Would I still do it if programming were only a hobby? Hell yeah, programming is one of the things that gives my life purpose and keeps me going in life, sometimes I programme or learn a new language just to chill and enjoy the beauty of problem-solving and learning.
But what I chase really is solving problems and making my life easy, programming is just a tool that helps me do that
For me the biggest satisfaction bringing my crazy ideas to life, and share it with others! 😊
That’s an amazing motivation - and I totally feel that! 😊 The endless creative potential of bringing ideas to life and sharing them with others is just incredible!
Typed my first BASIC program into an Atari 600XL from whatever source (don't recall) back when I was 9, probably because dad bought it cheap at a garage sale, before sensibly switching to a C64. Didn't even know what the semi-colon button was called as I typed it, so I just named it "B.A. earing" from that character on the A-Team TV show. Our primary school got hold of a BBC Micro and the teachers had no idea about them so just let us do whatever on them. I started highschool the same year they obtained Apple McIntosh computers and endured our teacher lecturing us for the entire first period about not "messing them up" because of how expensive they were, and in subsequent classes made us handwrite entire Pascal programs on paper for approval before we could get on a computer to type them in. Then in my twenties in 1997 (yes I'm old) I tried my hand at HTML 3.2 on the Windows 95 machine in the community room at the block of flats I'd just moved to. I was learning both javascript and mIRCscript as the internet emerged, wondering which one would persist…
I already had a job in an unrelated field that I enjoyed, so coding was always a hobby for me. Never considered making money from it, and I continue that to this day with adventures in SVG.
For me it starts with something like "Gee that new aperiodic shape they just discovered might make a nice jigsaw piece, could I base an online playable puzzle on it?" In answering that question I would get to learn the techniques needed to succeed, so I did.
I'm hoping the open source community continues to grow as more coders enter retirement but never stop coding for the same reason I do. For the love of it.
This hit closer than I expected. I think many of us start with curiosity, drift into money and tech-chasing, and then quietly arrive at the “what now?” phase. What I like here is the idea of choosing meaning once skill gives you leverage. Coding as a medium, not an identity. If it became just a hobby tomorrow, I’d probably still build — just more selectively, and with a clearer “why” than I had early on.
Thank you so much - I really love how you phrased this, especially “coding as a medium, not an identity.” That resonates deeply. I think that clarity of “why” is something many of us only discover later in the journey. And yes, building more selectively, with purpose, sounds like a pretty great place to be 😊
Got it, I have something to ask my manager tough questions 😂
✅ interesting technology
✅ social impact / meaningful purpose
Don’t forget the third checkbox:
✅ raise 😄
ha ha ha
I code so I can decode problems. :)
I love this. Simple, clever… and absolutely true 😊
Coding provides bread and butter to my family
That’s a totally fair and honest reason - providing for your family is a powerful motivation! 🙌
Though I have a feeling there’s at least a bit of passion there too… you wouldn’t be hanging around dev.to otherwise 😄
Yeah.. may that’s only thing I know..
Hey, that already means a lot - knowing something well enough to care for your family with it is huge ❤️
And honestly, “only thing I know” often secretly means “the thing I’ve invested time, effort, resilience and a lot of life into.” That’s worth being proud of.
Wishing you a great year ahead - wherever your path in tech takes you! 😊
Thanks for kind words. Wishing you success and happiness. Happy new year..!!!
I code to solve problems… and accidentally create new ones daily 😭💻 Relatable article!
Hahahaha exactly 😂
If you haven’t accidentally blown up production at least once… have you even truly call yourself a developer? 😄
😂
My motivation is mostly curiosity because I'm a teen (don't mind my PP), and also because it's fun to just figure bugs out, and have a dance or two (or 5). I'm planning to join the 2027 Swift Student Challenge, which I'm excited for.
I'm adept at solving problems, but I also want the bills paid. So if programming was only a hobby, I would probably focus on something that stretches my mental, which also brings in money.
Totally - money definitely isn’t irrelevant here 😄 For me it’s not just about income either, but also about the career possibilities, leverage, and the ability to negotiate your value. It’ll be really interesting to see how all of that evolves now in the age of AI!
Definitely!! What a time to be alive.
To make the computer do what I want in form of instructions
Love that - simple and powerful 😄 Being able to tell a computer what to do will never stop feeling a bit magical!
You are funny! Great article again! It is very good question :)
Aww thanks Ben 😊
no problem :)
I love coding, I got into it to build mobile apps and systems.
That’s awesome, Mona! 😊 Building apps and systems is such a powerful motivation - wishing you lots of exciting projects ahead! 🚀
I think I would still code even if there was no need for it, perhaps for the same reason people still collect VHS tapes.