> You don’t need to make software for mass appeal.
Some people, like myself, enjoy writing code but need a purpose to write code. If I don’t have a reason, or problem to solve, I can’t just sit down and start coding.
Honestly, that fits into the same boat for me. I like fixing problems for people and I’m not particularly creative in the classical sense. So messing with visual effects for the sake of it doesn’t really do it for me. Weirdly, if someone needed it for something, I’d probably pull a 60 hour shift to figure it all out ;-P
I mean, what is “useful” in the sense of “paying the bills” is quite different from “useful” in the sense of social utility - and what you _perceive_ as social utility is a whole other thing on top of that, that’s only _hopefully_ somewhat aligned with the actual thing.
Working on something that feels like it’s only useful as a way to extract money is incredibly unrewarding in my experience, to the point of increasing my feeling of burnout.
Useful does not mean mass appeal. The software I got paid the most to write is used by a handful of people on a manufacturing site and 99.9999999999% of the public will never see it.
It solved a problem they had and I’m proud of it but yea it’s incredibly niche and useful to a very select few people.
I don’t disagree and, to be honest, that kind of work is something I really enjoy.
I’m mostly, personally, talking about building toy apps or hacking my microwave to play Doom. Not throwing shade at those who do, it’s just not what motivates me.
Some people, like myself, enjoy writing code but need a purpose to write code. If I don’t have a reason, or problem to solve, I can’t just sit down and start coding.