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real problem is if you do something all day as a job, it's often the last thing you want to do when you get home.
same concept as many auto mechanics that drive the crappiest cars, known house builders that live in houses way beyond renovatible, chefs that wouldn't boil an egg at home....
but not always the case,
there are some whose hobby is/seems 'close' to their job, another mechanic I knew was big time into drag racing (his daily drive was a heap of crap but he had a shed full of real nice racers), builders that purposely buy run down properties to do up and flip...
... but asking them about it find out the real plan is nearly always to make enough on the hobby to ditch the job.
likewise contracting is another way out:
- if the job sounds like crap don't take it - no need to re-train (aka hit the web and self-train) for something you have zero interest in).
- contract says do X, so when signed X is all you have to do. no much less worries the "boss" will come down and shift you [temporary or even worse permanently] from X [something you don't mind] onto some other crap Y which you really have zero interest in doing (and if they insist on Y with contract you have much stronger option to tell them to get stuffed and negotiate a settlement rather then quit with empty pockets.)
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honey the monster, codewitch wrote: I still love the craft, just not the job.
So, what's the problem 
«Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?» T. S. Elliot
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honey the monster, codewitch wrote: if you do what you love for long enough, you'll no longer love what you do.
That's the risk with making a career out of a hobby.
I was okay with maybe the first two decades of working in the field. Then it's started to look more and more like "a job". Eventually I lost interest in working on my own little pet projects during evenings and weekends - it used to be that I could hardly wait until I was done with my workday to immediately get back into my own code, and my weekends were pretty much all dedicated to it. Now it can take me 6 months of trying to convince myself to fix even the smallest bugs.
But then, it's not necessarily that I don't like it anymore - rather, after my workday, I just feel exhausted and don't have the energy anymore to dive into anything new.
Age and getting out of shape also aren't helping.
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I can relate to that, and also I think I was able to treat my code more like an artist would and less like a functionary would when I wasn't doing it for money.
I engaged a whole different part of my brain i only got to employ occasionally at work.
But that also made coding a deeply personal, even emotional experience for me, and it's hard to just "give it away" to someone else. Money hardly seems adequate compensation for delivering pieces of myself for someone to package and sell.
But maybe I'm just overly attached.
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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So what's the choice? To code as a job or to ditch the job and code as a hobby?
What if the hobby grows to become the job?
What if it's not the job but the tasks within the job that suck? Maybe a different job? Different group or environment or technology or just a different challenge?
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote: So what's the choice? To code as a job or to ditch the job and code as a hobby?
Pretty much, at least for me.
Chris Maunder wrote: What if the hobby grows to become the job?
That's how I wound up in the field in the first place. =)
Chris Maunder wrote: What if it's not the job but the tasks within the job that suck? Maybe a different job? Different group or environment or technology or just a different challenge?
A good question. For me the answer came by way of experience. I had done a lot of different kinds of work and I found the kind of work I used to enjoy, I didn't anymore. I tried after that to go 100% telecommute (change of pace and environment) and worked in a few different areas.
It wasn't really the technology. I replied somewhere else on this thread that part of it was the creative process for me is very emotional, personal, and artistic, so it's hard I think, for me to keep selling off pieces of myself, especially when it's being used for things that are well, banal.
I've explained the concept to artist friends of mine and they get it. With other people it has been hit or miss. My work is very personal to me. It's part of me.
I don't know if that's weird to look at software that way - at least at that level - but there it is. That's a big part i think of the reason I don't do it anymore for money - absent my madness, which is another issue
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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honey the monster, codewitch wrote: the creative process for me is very emotional, personal, and artistic
It's interesting you say that. I speak to a lot of companies about how to talk to software developers and at a basic level many have no idea what a developer looks like (not that there's "a" developer mould we all fit into). I talk a lot about how software development isn't a science, it's an art. We're often creating bespoke pieces of code just like old furniture makers would: each leg of the chair, each knob on the drawer is often custom made, hand sanded, polished up carefully and checked by eye-balling it.
We're a doomed profession, no doubt about it, but while it lasts it's one of the most creative outlets I can think of.
And yet no one else understands this.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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And we are truly the architects of our obsolescence. Just wait 'til I get some code generators wired up to these AI projects I see on here all the time. 
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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Please don't...
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Happened to me the other way round: I have somewhat always liked coding and, well, designing software, but it was a rather insignificant hobby until I landed my current programming job which made me enjoy DYI electronics for realsies. Now I'm an avid DYI hobbyist, thanks to my job.
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I’ve been retired now for almost 8 years. I spent the last 15+ years preceding my retirement as a consultant (contractor), working for banks, specializing in lending applications, commercial and mortgage lending. I spent the previous 30 years working for three major banks, specializing in lending applications. As a consultant, I was able to charge upwards of $175.00 per hour, always triple digit rates, expenses included. Most assignments lasted about 6 months. Although the longest was 2 ½ years. I’ve worked on every continent except Antarctica. I enjoyed the work and especially the money.
I mention the foregoing not to brag, but to point out that I didn’t have much variety in my specialty domain nor much choice in computer languages, yet made worthwhile career. Banks still have applications in COBOL, but many other ancillary applications in languages popular for the time: dBase, Clipper, and Visual Basic 6. I sold my time and my expertise, which many companies were willing to pay my rate and terms most often without question.
I studied changes in lending laws as well as kept up with computer languages popular for the time. Becoming the best at what I did made me known as an expert in my domain. Computer languages , most often weren’t even a consideration.
I enjoy programming, I’ve been studying C# and SQL Server. Being able to exploit software features wasn’t an objective, providing a solution to a problem was.
Early in my career my manager gave me the following advice: Work to live, not live to work. There’s just too much more in life than twiddling bits.
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Love-god (on the edge) in a spin about planetoid (8)
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain
modified 7-Aug-19 7:15am.
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Asteroid ?
We can’t stop here, this is bat country - Hunter S Thompson RIP
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Nope
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain
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That's a relief - I had the same. I figured EROS for the love god but couldn't fit ATID into the rest even as an anagram, except AT ID which didn't make any sense.
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Same as but thought I'd eliminate it ( picked my practice lock today with a single pick ( no raking yet))
We can’t stop here, this is bat country - Hunter S Thompson RIP
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I think I know the solution, but I'm not fit to set a themed CCC for tomorrow.
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You don't have to do a themed clue
We can’t stop here, this is bat country - Hunter S Thompson RIP
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BALLSACK
Michael Martin
Australia
"I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible."
- Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
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I see where you're coming from there 
We can’t stop here, this is bat country - Hunter S Thompson RIP
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Best wrong answer as always!
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain
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prolapse
veni bibi saltavi
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Kerberos?
Eros from the love god, as others have hinted. Not sure on the rest though, so I assume it's wrong... I guess it could be Kerb like the thing on the edge of pavement?
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I think you have it there 
We can’t stop here, this is bat country - Hunter S Thompson RIP
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