Am I Weird For Thinking About Coding While I'm Out And About?

Transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.

Hey folks, I'm just going to drive to CrossFit here on the the weekend. Um, you won't realize this, but apologies for not haven't posted videos this past week cuz by the time I post this, it's already like a week later cuz I've been filming them. I just haven't been uh I didn't schedule them at all this week because I it's a little rund down from my on call shift that was overnight on Sunday to Monday. But we're getting back into it. I promise I'll get a bunch uploaded this uh this weekend here. But uh we're going to go to Experience Dev's subreddit for this one. It's going to be a kind of a light one just because it's a short drive to CrossFit.

But the post was about an engineer that was uh he has this question about like it's not really workrelated but more that he's saying how do you how do you deal with this like feeling or this this situation that you keep experiencing like where you're out with friends or you're doing other things and you're kind of thinking about like about building stuff And the idea is sort of that you might be hanging out with friends or you kind of you're just doing other things that aren't workrelated and you're thinking like hey like there's this idea for a project I want to build or like want to try something out in code or you know you're you're kind of drawn to to putting some stuff together and he said it's not even being driven by like oh I need to go build something to solve a business problem.

Uh, and it's not even that, you know, not he kind of said it. It's not that like it needs to even succeed or anything like that. It's just that it wants to just thinking about stuff he wants to build. And uh, so I thought it was interesting because uh, well, I mean, I I often feel this way and I have for for many years. I'll say like I feel fortunate that I am in software engineering space because it's uh it is just genuinely something I really enjoy and I'm interested in like I I find that I like this person when I'm driving around doing stuff or you know out at places I'm always thinking like oh this would be interesting to build or how would I solve this problem with code or whatever and it's just it's been that way ever since I you know could code and so was kind of curious.

So, I think I scroll to like the second comment or maybe it was even the first comment and someone was like, "Dude, like you're you're just overthinking it." Like, if you like coding, like if you like doing that kind of stuff, then just do it. There's literally there's no rule that says you're not you're not allowed to like enjoy stuff that sometimes people are doing for work, right? It's like if you just enjoy the thing, then do it. So, I didn't really have a goal with this video. Like, sometimes I I read a topic and I'm like, "Oh, there's maybe, I don't know, like a meta principle or some experience specifically I wanted to to share um as like a takeaway." So, usually that happens when I'm picking a topic and then I'm like, I can kind of focus on this. I don't really have that for this topic.

I just thought it was kind of interesting and figured if I started blabbing about it, we might get somewhere with it. But um maybe sort of the the meta principle here the the thing to take away is that you know every everyone has different things that they enjoy right and uh I personally am always thinking about people's like your your career and your life they don't have to be the same thing of course like you don't have to make your life about your career. But for me, I find it like a really interesting um opportunity to have those things be very correlated, right? Like if we're going to spend a long or a large portion of our lives doing things in our career, then like wouldn't it be great to have a career focused on the things you love to do?

And so I don't know like my that's sort of my belief is that I would I would love to optimize my career around um making sure that I'm I'm spending as much time in my career doing things I love because personally I do like to work. I like feeling productive. I like producing. Um but I want to make sure that like I'm enjoying it along the way. And there are absolutely times where I don't, right? And I think that's normal. I think there's it could even be on doing things that you generally love and you'll go through phases where you're like, "Not today. I don't want to do this. Can't be bothered." Um, so I think that's totally normal. you know, as much as possible. I I like I like the idea philosophically of like how do I make my career maximized for enjoyment and I think something that's challenging with that is that I don't necessarily think that means like every stage of your career is equally as enjoyable if that makes sense.

So, just to give you an example, I am like I'd be lying if I said otherwise, but I am the kind of person that thinks like if you, you know, if you bust your ass really early on, kind of like delayed, uh, gratitude, like if you do a lot of hard work early on, it will pay off later. Um, that has been sort of the life I have lived and, um, I have like I have my own lived experience that lines up with that. So, um I do think that way, but that doesn't mean that like just because you're busting your ass at some early point in your career doesn't mean you it can't be on things that you like to do, right? If you can still find those opportunities that overlap, like hell yeah.

Um, but I think when it comes to to doing this kind of like this kind of work, right, like software engineering, building stuff, building projects, spending time in code, or maybe it's just like now that we have a lot of AI tools to help us put code together, like maybe your interest is less about the lines of code and more about like the things that you can, you know, you can slap together and have working together. Um I think for me personally uh there are certainly uh interesting challenges in code that um I don't I don't think that that is the number one thing that I love. But I think there are some interesting challenges that uh they get my brain really going and I'm like how how would I go solve this? And it's very enjoyable to get to the solution.

And I don't know, it it's still going to take a little bit more time before uh I see if uh you know, having AI to kind of like accelerate me through those types of problems if that's something I miss more and more. But I I suspect it's a that's a smaller portion of like why I like software engineering. I I think I'm a lot more interested in having uh pieces that can be put together and given the the rate at which I could code before having things like AI tools that often meant like okay like I can think about you know uh classes right so I have like methods and classes and I can share my classes and have class libraries now I have these building blocks and I'm like this is cool right but that's the the the rate at which I'm able to

develop and produce use and given that I'm you know uh a couple decades into programming and you know 15 years into my career having AI to help me produce code now means that it's moving uh away from like oh I have you know interesting sharable classes that I can reuse across different projects and stuff cuz those are interesting building blocks for me to now it's like I have like applications or like something on a broader or scale maybe a service that I can repurpose or share um across different things I'm building. And I I think it's just because the rate at which code can be produced and how I can take an idea for something and uh just make it make it tangible um faster and on a larger scale. So for me, having AI tools and being able to build things is still like extremely exciting, right?

Like if anything that's made software engineering for me more exciting because there's always been so many like things that I'm thinking of or like things I want to try and 99% of them like this person was kind of saying in their post like they might do nothing like they're not a it's not like a billion dollar business or something. It's just like this is an interesting problem that I think would be really cool to see if I could if I could just have something that did this. Would I use it more than once? I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe. Like there's so many different things to try and often find myself, you know, kind of daydreaming about that stuff. And yeah, I think that especially with AI tools and being able to generate more that that allows me to play around more and that is kind of exciting.

So I think I think some people well I would say statistically if I had to guess probably most people in software engineering aren't this way and I think that's totally fine, totally acceptable. uh you know just to call it out. I already told you I didn't have a like a goal with this video but uh certainly I want to be careful that I'm not suggesting that you you must feel this way to be successful. Absolutely not. You know if if coding for you is your 9 to5 and like outside of that you're like screw that I think that's totally fine. I would just hope that you don't hate coding at work or hate doing the parts of your software engineering role because I think that like if that's something you hate, I really hope the pay is good enough for you that the rest of your life is um you know lifted up from that so that overall you know your quality of life is good.

if you're if you're feeling like your pay is crap and and you hate what you're doing at work. I'm like, I just feel like you really need to get out of what you're doing and start exploring. Um, easier said than done. I realize, you know, a paycheck is better than no paycheck, but um I I just mean from like a long-term perspective. I it would be such a shame for you to go through a large portion of your life being like, I just don't like what I do. And one thing I wanted to mention especially with software engineering that is really cool for us as software engineers is that um there's there's some different levels to it, right? So it's not just are you building software or the language you're using, right? The tech stack you're using. That's all part of it. That's all cool stuff to explore.

And I think that there's within that space, there could be things you love and things you hate. Like for example, I love using C. I've just always used it. I really like the stack. It It just clicks well with how my brain works and how I like to think through things and things I have access to. And like I really don't like JavaScript. And it's not because I think that it's, you know, I think it's terrible or it's stupid or something. It's just I just don't enjoy using it. Right. So within the space, I gravitate towards tech stacks and things that like I'm interested in. And that's cool that we have such an ability to move between tools and tech stacks. Um, but not only that, so the other part to it is that software is used in so many different domains. So it's a fun challenge.

Like I challenge you to think about a space that literally does not require any software, right? Try it. And if the your rationale for it is, well, there isn't software for it, then I would say surprise. You probably found a really cool opportunity that you may want to capitalize on because software is used with everything. There's always an opportunity where software in some domain could help. And it might be that there is software and it's crap and there is an opportunity. It might be that you've discovered something where no one's using software for it. The for my brain to try and think about things like that. I'm like, is there something out in nature that people are doing that they're not around computers or something or that it's like and if there was a thing like that then like I don't know you could probably build software that helps people do those things.

So I think that's a really cool part about software engineering for us as uh as folks in this space is that we can move between tech stacks and find things that we like. we can move between domains, right? When I've talked about this before when I share my my career experience, like I I got so lucky it like in my my first full-time job. Um when I worked for a digital forensics company and like I didn't I didn't grow up being like, oh, I love forensics or like CSI Miami or whatever the CSI places are. Um, I it just like it wasn't an interest. And it's not to say like the the concept like turned me off, but it was more like I just okay, that's a that's a thing that exists. Cool. Sure. You know, indifferent to it, if you will.

And um I just I feel so lucky that I had that early on because um is forensics itself something that I was like oh like I you know I'm obsessed with forensics now I love it. No like it was it was a lot more interesting than I ever could have imagine. So that was very nice benefit but this other level. So I've kind of talked about two so far which is like the technical part and then the domain the third level if if I could even structure it this way was like sort of um it's a little bit more abstract and it's like your your impact or like uh sort of this feeling of reward and I I feel like that can look absolutely different for everyone different things you're motivated by right for example maybe that third level for you is like yeah and my job pays me an assload of money and like that to me feels very fulfilling.

And I think that's the case for a lot of people. Certainly, if I got paid an assload of money, that would feel really cool. Um, but there could be things like, you know, I have a a good friend of mine who is very uh especially compared to me, like he's a lot more motivated around um what's a good way to say like I don't know the environment, let's say, just to generalize it. So, he is very motivated by that. He wants to make sure that in his career and how he's spending the time in his life that he's finding ways to to sort of give back to that or to improve in that space. So he he has absolutely uh put himself in situations where he has forfeit, you know, an even bigger paycheck to be able to do something he's more aligned with, right?

Um, there's people that are just really interested in being able to solve like what they believe are some of the world's most difficult challenges or challenges at scale or like very specific niche challenges. And so getting to work on that could be, you know, this super motivating thing. And for me, I had this experience through digital forensics at least. Um, that was like something I had never even considered would be I don't know like something in my career that I got to participate in and feel good about. And that was that when we were building these digital forensics products like one of the primary use cases was for helping uh catch child predators. And so what like no like it it there was no sort of more rewarding feeling than knowing that you were contributing for me at least than contributing uh to helping people

in you know law enforcement or in other scenarios being able to help essentially catch pedophiles and uh especially you know like unfortunately how a lot of the software was used is kind of like after the fact, right? So they're they're using forensic tools because something has happened and um so there's always like this unfortunate aspect where it's like some generally something has happened and you use the tools to sort of uh you know convict someone or or the other way around if someone's wrongfully um accused, right? So it's all about the truth. And so through through using the software and how the users are involved here. Sorry, there's a lot of traffic coming for some reason. Um through the software and how the users are using it. The the impact of that is that uh if you know if someone truly was committing you know terrible crimes then you're sort of stopping them from being able to continue to do that.

And so, um, that was always like this extremely rewarding feeling and like empowering feeling to be like, we're part of this. And when I s like like I said, I got very fortunate that like my first my first job allowed me to sort of have that that feedback and that made you know that was one of the reasons why it was so um I don't I don't want to say like so easy to to do a lot of work. That doesn't sound right. Um, it was just really engaging and empowering and so like because there was so much work to do, it was like you can jump into any of it and it just really felt like you're always making forward progress um on that mission. So feel very fortunate that I had that and I don't know like it's any I feel like anything I do after that's going to be really difficult to uh to match that kind of a that feeling.

So, in software engineering, we get exposed to all these different opportunities, right? There's a lot of different paths to take. And I think that's great. And um whether or not you're the kind of person that loves to build things outside of work or whatever, I don't, you know, I don't think that's a requirement or not, but so I hear so often it's like, no, that's not for me. Like, you know, it's 9 to5 only. And again, I think that's cool, but I don't think we get to talk about to other people enough where it's like, hey, man, if you like to build that's cool. Like, you don't have to be ashamed of like I like writing code. I like tinkering and building stuff. Like, that's cool. Nothing wrong with that. And so, I hope that people find whether it's through writing code or, you know, through other hobbies or even if it's just through work, they're able to find things they enjoy.

Like I think it's cool. And there are parking spots. Nice. Okay. Well, thanks folks. Um, yeah, like I said, didn't have an agenda for that one really, but if you got questions, leave them below in the comments. Otherwise, go to codemute.com. You can submit questions anonymously. to leave off on this video. I'm thinking maybe I'm going to build just because we're on the topic of it. I might try to do something that like takes the code commute videos and automatically just like does an AI generated blog post. So we'll have a disclaimer that it's AI generated. But I think that might be a cool thing to build. Why? Because it sounds interesting. See you later.