Working on my hobby code does feel like work, but it feels like the parts of work that I enjoy.
The drudgery of my job comes from all of the stuff surrounding the code: tickets, meeting, code reviews, meetings, time cards, meetings. When I work on my hobby code, all of that goes away, and I can just code.
Sometimes it's frustrating. Sometimes I'll bang my head against a problem for a few hours, or a few days, then have a sudden "a-ha" that makes everything work. That is agitating in the moment, but the "a-ha" makes it worth it.
It also helps that the domains of my work and hobby code are completely separate. When I write code for fun, there's no enterprisey stuff going on. Right now I'm working on some code that generates character sheets for an RPG. There's no database, no Keycloak, hell, there isn't even a server. It feels a lot more like the toy code I wrote in college than the professional code that pays my bills.
If your hobby code doesn't bring you that kind of joy, you might be better off finding a different hobby? We don't need to chain ourselves to an IDE 24/7.
The drudgery of my job comes from all of the stuff surrounding the code: tickets, meeting, code reviews, meetings, time cards, meetings. When I work on my hobby code, all of that goes away, and I can just code.
Sometimes it's frustrating. Sometimes I'll bang my head against a problem for a few hours, or a few days, then have a sudden "a-ha" that makes everything work. That is agitating in the moment, but the "a-ha" makes it worth it.
It also helps that the domains of my work and hobby code are completely separate. When I write code for fun, there's no enterprisey stuff going on. Right now I'm working on some code that generates character sheets for an RPG. There's no database, no Keycloak, hell, there isn't even a server. It feels a lot more like the toy code I wrote in college than the professional code that pays my bills.
If your hobby code doesn't bring you that kind of joy, you might be better off finding a different hobby? We don't need to chain ourselves to an IDE 24/7.