I started programming at the age of 6 on a Commodore 64. Now I'm 28, and I have to complete 4 courses from a first degree in Computer Science.
I'm starting to get bored with writing code after all these years. I've taken a course in Computer Science in theoretical computer languages and 10 years of C system coding in network security field and I just don't get any stimulation from writing code.
I can write code in C, C++, Python or whatever language you want, but I can't get excited about what I'm doing. I can't feel any challenge. I've written multi-threaded code, HTTPS MITM proxy and a WSGI application without the need of any specific algorithms skill.
I feel that all this new stuff is all the same, with simpler (or more) abstractions or automation in it, but it all sounds the same to me. Over and over again. The computable language is all Turing computable, so coding is only a replication of a similar pattern in this subset of a partial function.
In my everyday work I'm feeling bored even with searching for bugs, or doing benchmarks on code, or fixing the problem with the library X,Y,Z.
I'm a very curious person. I always get stimulated by something. But I can't even when I look at great code. I feel more comfortable in how the things work.
Is it time to make an advance in my career? Or to get more challenging stuff in Computer Science? Maybe get a major degree in CS?
I've started to read my first book on project management "Peopleware" and I'm getting more interested in the software development lifecycle. What do you suggest to do?
Perhaps trying to get into Google or Microsoft or Apple like some friends of mine have done. Or perhaps a more managerial career path. I have also tried to find a good book about communication rules and "people personality" to prepare me for the possibility of getting into management.
Any suggestions?
P.S: I have a lot of interest, I'm not depressed :) I love mountain, trekking, take photo shoot and I'm a sport climber, I love to swim and sport in general, sometimes I do running, actually I'm reading book about my country (Italy) story from AC to today and I love trips (this summer I made 4000Km to see a lot of place in Spain and climb in it, all over in only 3 week, not a holiday but a marathon, 24 km of trekking made my hernia injury), I love theater and life in general.
Thanks to all, thinking about all the answer give to me the opportunity to make my path more clear.
For a summary purpose we can generalize about the most voted up answer.
First of all all the people vote-up the necessity to made our work a support of your life and not the only reason to stay in life (this is not my case), so, if you only reason of life if working you come fast to a really depressive situation. As peopleware say, Vienna don't waiting for you :)
After this reminder people suggest to:
- increase technical complexity I'm actually working on to increase challenge and get less bored about it.
- change the field of expertise to a non technical field trying to become a manager or make some carer advance in a non technical fields related to your work.
- change the field of expertise in another kind of technical challenge, are you a system programmer ? try to get less bored developing about application for human so you can feel more comfortable viewing people using your useful software
- make some advance in your computer science degree in your academic path
For my purpose the right answer is to advance in computer science, for my feeling i think programming is not the only computer science way to get and i think i can feel better getting other path in computer science different from software engineering carer.