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Oddly enough, the job of programming is not filed with hazy days of non stop coding. The ensuing harshness is merely to match reality.
You have to do other boring crap like:
- Write documentation
- Configure build servers
- Discuss progress at daily meetings
You have to have meetings with other team members to discuss how to solve a problem that has many solutions which are all approximately equal in their goodness and suckage.
Programming is a group effort. You never know the entirety of the system, only the parts you have worked on. There is literally stuff being developed you don't even know exists.
If you're contemplating quitting purely due to boredom, you are totally un-bloody-prepared for real world work at a software company. If you admitted in an interview that you're looking to quit your degree out of boredom, the interviewer will have a hard time holding back the laughter.
My advice is to stick it out, for several reasons:
- You will be far more valuable with a completed degree. Everyone will immediately question why you didn't - I've never met anyone in this business with half a degree.
- You will learn how to deal with others and successfully complete a boring project.
- More often than not boring stuff is exactly what you'll be doing for a living.
- You need to find some way to look past the boredom - eg, this project gets you experience in a new to you language/framework/methodology, lets you shine above the rest of the team on a particular task, etc
My way of dealing with the boredom is software projects I do on the side. I get to do what I want, take as long as I want, and am not obligated to complete it if I think it sucks, or there is a better idea that requires starting over.
Really, the fact that programming from day to day can be kind of boring just means it's like any other job - I've never met anyone who is so excited to go to work every day 5 years into their chosen career path.
Every now and then I get a confluence of coolness where I get to do something quite interesting for a relatively short bit before it gets that boring, been there done that feeling to it.
One thing to bear in mind is the more boring a system is, the easier it is to maintain over time, which is important because software tends to hang around for 10 years at private companies, and 20 at government agencies. But devs only hang around for 2 years, so there is complete turnover of the whole team at least three times even if the software is only used for 10 years.
There is an art to solving a complex problem in a boring way, which you should get to experience at some point. It's one of those things that makes it all worthwhile.
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Oddly enough, the job of programming is not filed with hazy days of non stop coding. The ensuing harshness is merely to match reality.
You have to do other boring crap like:
- Write documentation
- Configure build servers
- Discuss progress at daily meetings
You have to have meetings with other team members to discuss how to solve a problem that has many solutions which are all approximately equal in their goodness and suckage.
Programming is a group effort. You never know the entirety of the system, only the parts you have worked on. There is literally stuff being developed you don't even know exists.
If you're contemplating quitting purely due to boredom, you are totally un-bloody-prepared for real world work at a software company. If you admitted in an interview that you're looking to quit your degree out of boredom, the interviewer will have a hard time holding back the laughter.
My advice is to stick it out, for several reasons:
- You will be far more valuable with a completed degree. Everyone will immediately question why you didn't - I've never met anyone in this business with half a degree.
- You will learn how to deal with others and successfully complete a boring project.
- More often than not boring stuff is exactly what you'll be doing for a living.
- You need to find some way to look past the boredom - eg, this project gets you experience in a new to you language/framework/methodology, lets you shine above the rest of the team on a particular task, etc
My way of dealing with the boredom is software projects I do on the side. I get to do what I want, take as long as I want, and am not obligated to complete it if I think it sucks, or there is a better idea that requires starting over.
Really, the fact that programming from day to day can be kind of boring just means it's like any other job - I've never met anyone who is so excited to go to work every day 5 years into their chosen career path.
Every now and then I get a confluence of coolness where I get to do something quite interesting for a relatively short bit before it gets that boring, been there done that feeling to it.
One thing to bear in mind is the more boring a system is, the easier it is to maintain over time, which is important because software tends to hang around for 10 years at private companies, and 20 at government agencies. But devs only hang around for 2 years, so there is complete turnover of the whole team at least three times even if the software is only used for 10 years.
There is an art to solving a complex problem in a boring way, which you should get to experience at some point. It's one of those things that makes it all worthwhile.
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