I found it easy enough. I learn new things for fun. I don't consider it taxing at all. Anyone who wants to pay me to learn something new, I'm happy to oblige them.
> I found it easy enough. I learn new things for fun. I don't consider it taxing at all
I have no doubts that you find learning fun and find it easy, but the last sentence I'm a little hesitant with. It reminds me of a single pane comic strip I recently saw. It was of a business man receiving a logo from a designer, and he said, "Why should I pay you $X dollars for a logo you designed in ten minutes?". To which the artist replied, "It took me ten years to get that quick at making logos." Learning the art of software development is similar, you need to get a solid foundation in your domain of knowledge before you can build anything both well and quickly or before you start to find things easier to figure out.
I would like to stress that programming is very hard and taxing when you are completely new to it and it progressively gets easier and easier. I only was recently re-informed of how hard programming is as I have recently helped my brother begin programming, because like you for the most part I find it relatively simple to learn something new. Though I find it easy to learn I notice when I first dive into a new framework, language, or codebase I do have to watch my stress levels and make sure I'm not getting overwhelmed by it.
>I mean, come on, in the grand scheme of things, developers are wizards who never have to be worried about 90% of the things other people in the world have to worry about. These finer qualities of career enjoyment are nice-to-haves, not necessities.
If by wizards you mean everything they do seems like magic to everyone who has never written any code and themselves and their methods are often misunderstood I would say that is true, and I think that may be part of the problem. Though some might oppose it I think the idea of educating more people in CS in grade schools might help combat that.
To the second sentence, I would say everyone has their own measurement of what a necessity and a nice-to-have is, but often most things people complain about aren't completely necessary. You can tell he (the blog poster) has a problem with the way things are being done at his company I appreciated his opinion although I don't necessarily take his stance.
There's an art to learning. I work on that too. The better I get, the quicker it takes me to integrate new ideas.
> Learning the art of software development is similar, you need to get a solid foundation in your domain of knowledge before you can build anything both well and quickly or before you start to find things easier to figure out.
If you look at all the other skilled professions you'd find similar dynamics. You spend a lot of time paying your dues. Once you've paid them, then you have to learn how to turn them into a career. What's unfortunate about development is that there's never that moment where you call yourself done with the skill-building part and start on the career-building part. Other professions have that, but development does not and probably never will. It's too big, and changes too much for an examination to be worthwhile.
> If by wizards you mean everything they do seems like magic to everyone who has never written any code and themselves and their methods are often misunderstood I would say that is true, and I think that may be part of the problem.
That sense of magic is what keeps salaries relatively high compared to other individual contributors. It also means that we can cloister ourselves into priesthoods where those with the arcane knowledge can band together against the uneducated masses. I used to think coders needed a union, until I realized we've already pretty-well self-organized into one.
I envy you. Mostly being a programmer learning "new" things is the same as a taxi driver moving to a different city every half year and learn the new topology.
In both cases, you're not learning anything that is fundamental to human knowledge.
Well, unless you're a research scientist, nothing you ever learn is fundamental to human knowledge.
But depending on what you spend your time learning, you can improve in your craft. I think that is valuable. For some people becoming excellent craftsmen gives them purpose in life.
You can work backwards towards first principles. In my case, whenever I learn something new, I always stop to boil things down to the essentials. What does this new tool / framework actually do, what am I hoping to accomplish.
Then I try to work it as best I can into my current toolset. For me, all projects get a repo on Github, and I get the nasty infrastructure bits implemented first, like deployment workflow, before actually working on the problem.
There's an art and craft to learning new things that I find fulfilling all on its own without having to turn it into something lofty.
