Fascinating comparison of comments. If you read the comments to the article, 100% of them are "same with me". If you read the comments in HN, 50% of them are "set your expectations correctly."
I read this and I felt like I needed to talk with the guy. It doesn't matter if you "don't have anything to show" for 15 years of work. It doesn't matter. Where is it written that programmers must have a hand-coded website or a open source project to their name?
I also never buy the "I'm too much of a perfectionist" line. That's not a thing.
You got bored. You didn't have motivation to complete. Sure, happens all the time. "Too much of a perfectionist" is not a thing.
It matters to some people, the same way art matters to some people as a way to be proud of what they’ve done, and have something “tangible” to show for it. Programming can be an extremely creative endeavor, and not having something to hang on the wall can be a bit disconcerting for the kind of craftsman who wants to look upon their work / listen to their latest composition every day.
You may not need anything code related to feel fulfilled / happy / whatever in life, but being dismissive by projecting isn’t useful.
I do agree that “too much of a perfectionist” is a stretch. It could be lack of motivation or fear of failure, or something entirely different, I don’t think the meaning is lost here.
This is an article on dev.to. The home of frustrated redditors trying to make a name for themselves. I'm starting to see too many of these on HN and have never seen anything posted there worthwhile reading.
I wouldn't say it's a home for frustrated redditors, but having hanged around there for a while, it feels to be a place mostly made of junior webdevs teaching junior webdevs.
The difference is Quora started out great with great questions and answers from authoritative sources but can now be thrown in the dung heap of ruin. dev.to, otoh, started out that way.
I read this and I felt like I needed to talk with the guy. It doesn't matter if you "don't have anything to show" for 15 years of work. It doesn't matter. Where is it written that programmers must have a hand-coded website or a open source project to their name?
I also never buy the "I'm too much of a perfectionist" line. That's not a thing.
You got bored. You didn't have motivation to complete. Sure, happens all the time. "Too much of a perfectionist" is not a thing.