Why Isn’t Coding Fun Anymore?

Introduction

• On social media I’ve been seeing the sentiment that coding isn’t fun anymore
• This is due to several factors ranging from issues with specific jobs, through long-term concerns of replacement via AI
• Coding attracts people due to:
  • Money (high salaries)
  • Difficulty (people like to problem-solve)
  • Need (the industry ‘always’ needs new tech made and maintained)
• So in 2025, what makes coding not fun anymore?

What makes coding fun?

• Cool projects
  • Tech projects can be super interesting, and even gain international attention (ie Facebook, eBay, etc.)
  • Interesting cutting-edge ideas by entrepreneurs
  • Inventing solutions to solve interesting problems in ways never thought possible
• Problem-solving
  • Some people love a challenge
  • Others love a good puzzle to solve
• Variability
  • One day you could be coding up a desktop app, the next you could be working on a marketing website
  • You can work anywhere you have a laptop and internet connection
  • It’s “easy” to start a side hustle, or your own business

What’s ruining coding in 2025?

• Elitism
  • Elitism is present in many fields, and coding is no exception.
  • Coding can feel almost like an art to some, but for others there’s a best way to handle things and a min/max attitude that you’d be “an absolute moron” not to do in the best possible way every single time - oh and if you don’t know the best way, maybe you should quit because you’re a bad engineer
  • Filling in GitHub squares every single day - the idea that if you aren’t coding then you aren’t doing anything worth your time
• Factory-Work…ish
  • Factory workers have repetitive tasks that last for long shifts, typically working on a continental rotations (day shift | night shift) - producing product on a continual basis in a virtually never-ending production line
  • While coding isn’t factory work, it is in such demand now that the expectation seems to be that code will be continually produced in a never-ending series of deliverables that will engage and excite customers
• Unrealistic Deadlines & Unreliable Code
  • Startups “move fast and break things” in order to get products out the door and money in the bank quickly… ultimately with the goal that eventually they will slow down to ship reliable products that bring in a good amount of cashflow
  • Unfortunately, the “move fast” part attracts the idea that developers can code things quickly - pushing deadlines up into timeframes that produce unreliable code
    • Inevitably unreliable code will create issues that will see the developer scrambling to make fixes in production - these issues also rarely push back deadlines for new features
• Uncertain Future
  • Development teams that finish large projects are commonly rewarded with layoffs now that the company has their product completed
  • AI is always threatening developer jobs with a myriad of pro-AI and anti-AI opinions flooding social media and injecting itself into the minds of leadership
• The Art is Lost
  • Years ago I saw people sharing the solutions they wrote up for the same problems, seeing the different solutions almost like various styles to paint a portrait
    • Obviously there are some methods that could be considered mistakes (ie security issues)
  • Nowadays, we have AI that pumps out code quickly and efficiently, taking the problem solving out of the solution (to some extent)
    • The idea is that coding is available for everyone within seconds now - this is the same sort of feeling that artists have had when AI started making graphics

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