There’s a kind of magic in writing code.
Most of us didn’t start coding because we had to—we started because we were curious. We enjoyed the challenge, the creativity, and that rush you get when something finally clicks. The late-night “aha!” moments. The ugly but working scripts. The sense that you built something from nothing.
But somewhere along the way, it feels like that joy is getting buried under pressure.
Now, we’re told we need to learn a new framework every six months just to stay “relevant.” Tutorials all blur together. Build this. Clone that. Ship fast. Optimize everything. The craft we loved is starting to feel like a never-ending rat race.
So here’s a question worth asking: 
Have we unintentionally traded joy for efficiency?
We celebrate clean code and best practices—but what about messy prototypes that never see production? 
We value productivity—but what about curiosity for curiosity’s sake? 
We push ourselves to ship—but when do we give ourselves space to explore?
This isn’t a rant against progress. Tools evolve, and so should we. But maybe we also need room to play—to build weird things, revisit old projects, try a language we don’t “need,” or just… code without a goal.
<h3>Let’s Talk</h3>
I’m genuinely curious:
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What keeps you in love with this work?
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What’s the last thing you built just for fun?
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Have you found ways to protect that creative spark in a world driven by metrics and deadlines?
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Let’s open up the conversation. Not about the latest framework or tech stack—but about what makes us feel alive as developers.
Because at the end of the day, if we lose the joy, what are we even building for?

Coffee Mug

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Dev World

Explores the tension between the original joy of coding and modern development pressures. Discusses how constant framework changes, productivity demands, and industry expectations can overshadow the creative and exploratory aspects that initially drew developers to programming. Encourages reflection on maintaining passion and finding time for playful, goal-free coding projects.

Are We Losing the Joy of Coding?

It’s so easy to forget why we started coding in the first place.
Lately, it has felt like a treadmill of tutorials and tech trends, and I’ve definitely found myself chasing productivity over passion at times. This post is such a needed reminder to slow down, explore, and let ourselves play again, to build something silly, or totally useless… just because it makes us smile 😊
Thank you for opening up this conversation. 🙏🏻

For me it’s the bills. When I started coding I was young and lived in my parent’s house, building things and exploring was fun and I looked forward to it everyday. Then adulthood comes with the responsibilities, now I can’t afford to simply code for fun and build what I want. I have to follow rules and ship fast. It’s exhausting and mundane but it is what it is.

I totally agree and thanks for the insights. For me I would code even if I weren’t being paid for it and don’t want to lose that by being so fixated on what others quantify as “growth” that I forgot why I started. I started building a web app recently just for the heck of it. Just to connect up several APIs and see how I can get data rendered based on user selections. No one else may care about it but that’s more of a side consideration. I’m building it because I want to and want to continually learn and chase that curiosity you mentioned.

The late-night “aha!” moments are gone—nowadays, it’s the late-night “finally!” moments.
The fascination with coding and building messy prototypes has turned into completing Jira tickets and collecting paychecks.
I’ve been thinking about the same things lately and finally found this blog to share my thoughts.
Currently exploring AI workflows to automate generic stuff—it’s fun, at least for now.

I love coding. I always have.
I hate it when I’m told I need to embrace AI and let it do the coding for me. There is no joy in writing a prompt and then fixing the results or tuning that prompt. There’s only joy in writing code myself.
I also hate it when I’m told I need to delegate my job to our technical partners and let them do the coding for us, so that I can do “more important” things. Or when I’m “promoted” into PM jobs.
I don’t want to write prompts, or technical descriptions, or host meetings. I just want to code. It clears my head. It brings me peace.
I love coding in stable (boring) languages. Hype is for other people.
Why learn something that probably wont be relevant in 2 years. I want to deepen my knowledge of coding, not start over every so many years.
And yes, in my free time, I also code, small things, silly things. It’s very important to avoid being “productive”. Processing P5 is fun and completely useless. I love it.