Stuff I love about coding

Day 313 / 366

I have been coding for fun ever since I was 17. For the first 3 years I did this, I worked for a lot of startups, and build websites and apps for various clubs in my college. But I didn’t get paid. I did it for two reasons, firstly I loved coding. Even building my first calculator program with C++ fascinated me.

And Secondly, I wanted to learn. I wanted to get better. Getting paid was never the main goal. This is why I was happy to code, even if it meant staying up all night to finish a website or trying to fix a bug for weeks with no success. I enjoyed all of that.

Things change when you start getting paid for doing the thing that you love. I started coding at a time when it was one of the highest-paying gigs. So I was able to start making good money quickly, maybe more than I deserved, but definitely more than I needed. Slowly the source of happiness shifted from the joy of writing good code and building cool stuff to just earning as much money as I can.

I can safely say that I did not enjoy coding for the past 2–3 years. In fact, I had been focused more on managing and mentoring than actually writing code. But today was different. I won’t go into the boring details, but today I wrote some cool code. I automated a lot of stuff in one of my projects, and I did some devops stuff that I always used to think is a bit complicated for me. But it worked out, and I felt the same amount of joy and excitement that I used to feel back in college, back when I knew I could do this for free for the rest of my life.

Life is full of things to stress about, and amidst all of that, I am glad that I rediscovered something that brings me joy.