I have 7 years of experience, at this point software development is mostly a job. I have hobbies that have nothing to do with it.
I'm curious to see if this is the general trends, or if people are still fidgeting with side projects even after years in the industry.
15 years as a hobbyist, 20 years as a professional spending hobby time on other pursuits, 5 years where I never wanted to see a computer again, starting back into hobby in my retirement.
When I was working as a programmer, I had too many interests to justify pursuing hobby projects when I could be building a boat, playing in a community band, or whatever.
So you went 5 years without any programming? What got you back into it?
There were a number of factors. First and foremost, I've loved programming since one of my younger brothers got a programmable calculator for university. Not long after, I bought one of the first VIC-20s. Programming and playing in a community band were my only hobbies.
My last programming job was with a great company that turned toxic when it got bought by an investment group. That pushed me to a state of depression and burnout, leading to our decision to move to our cabin before retirement, where I went back to a labour job. There was no internet or cell signal at home and my aging laptop just got stuffed in the back of a closet. I spent my hobby time fishing, rowing, hiking, swimming, and learning how to grow stuff.
Then a change of leadership turned that job into something I could no longer tolerate, so I switched to driving school bus. I realized that with the extra time, I could start early on retirement activities, one of which was (is) education for fun. I started hitting the library computer (singular!) between bus runs on the days it was open. Before I knew it, I was taking online programming courses, buying a new laptop, and getting Starlink at home.
I fully retired last June and am starting to ramp up my skills. I've got 3 programming projects in various states of planning and development, and recently decided which one to pour my energies into. (Keeping in mind that I'm also into building boats and furniture and into long-distance rowing and swimming. And fishing, hiking, growing and preserving fruits and vegetables ...).
Sorry, I've rambled on, but I'm just so excited and have so much energy and motivation now that all day, every day is mine to do with as I will.
It ebbs and flows constantly. Regardless, the only work I like doing is coding and I hate it when I'm expected to do anything else.
Personally I just love programming. It's my main hobby but it's great to also be able to do it as job.
I've got enough years in that it's getting harder to remember exactly what year I started professionally, but somewhere a bit north of 25 years. I still spend some time on personal interest coding projects. I'm working with a friend on a Discord roleplaying bot that integrates with various AI providers. But we sort of hit proof of concept and it's been a real slog to iterate and turn it into something worth sharing with others.
If I'm honest, my coding partner has been carrying it and I've mostly been in a "consulting" role. I also have a wife and five kids (two at home) and I rarely have time to myself to just sit down and code. I have a lot of house projects that are much more critical.
I've been doing more hobby-type stuff lately after 5 years working as a dev and doing very little coding outside of work. Before now it was always work, even my free time I'm like struggling to get things running or stuck or whatever. Now I know a few languages and I can just make stuff so its a little more fun for me lately
I have 20 years of full-time job and looking for time for a hobby. Firstly it was a hobby also, but now I am bored with making the same project for 16 years, I want to try other fields, and learning new tech is my hobby.
