I may be off base here, but it sounds to me like you just aren't interested in the subjects. One of the biggest factors to learning is how much interest you have. There are tricks you can do to get yourself more interested, but it does take a fair amount of work and isn't always effective. But if you wonder why sometimes we can remember silly details or whole complicated plotlines from stories but can't remember a simple math formula, a lot of it is actually your interest levels. Your brain prioritizes the stories because it is interesting, you can relate, and thus form strong neural connections. It is much harder to do that with a math equation that is fairly abstract and not in constant use.

So I would start at finding which thing interests you the most. What meets the job criteria that you are looking for BUT also excites you? Then focus on moving in that direction.

I think you hit the nail on the head here. This person tries to get us to believe they're stupid; but, if they believe that themselves, truly, then they're going to create self-fulfilling prophecies. They need to find something they're interested in to work on every day. 8 hours is a long time each day to be doing something, it's better if you're interested in it, so that at least some of those hours are fun.

And I will say, and I have often repeated that software development, programming, is a horrible job if you don't love it. Programming sucks if you don't enjoy it. It's too much thinking, too much abstracting, too much typing, too many meetings, and horribly, horribly boring - unless it's your thing, and then it's not.

OP, don't force it to be your thing if it's not your thing.

You may also have some depression. It may genuinely be worth seeing someone about that to help you navigate it and grow and cope with it. Depression is horrible, and any step that can be done to help yourself through it is a huge win for your own peace.

Here's the question that inevitably pops up from this: what do you do if nothing interests you in this way?

There are interesting things, sure, but those are usually fleeting. You'll be interested in something for a month or two and then lose interest in it. You can't earn a living on that. What do you do then?

A while back, I overheard a coworker of mine was complaining about a cousin that was couch-surfing his way through relatives, not getting a job, just playing video games all day and moving on to a different relative or friend after getting kicked out of the last place he stayed.

The coworker and the person he was talking to were both very confused by how anyone could ever want to live that way. I had a very different reaction: if I had been aware that this was an option when I was 22, I totally would have done that, but I just never considered it as a possibility.

Even almost 20 years later it still sounds like a great life, other than the soul-crushing guilt and shame I would feel...

Did he actually enjoy living that way? To me, that sounds like the result of having no real options and playing video games constantly to avoid facing that reality...

> To me, that sounds like the result of having no real options and playing video games constantly to avoid facing that reality...

I think that is the point of the parent comment. Some people think it is horrible, like a result of having no options, and some people think it is ideal! Personally, I would go crazy without deadlines hanging over my head and lots of resources to tackle those deadlines with.

A lot of people at age 22 live with their parents and play video games or do whatever.

At least as far as jobs go, there are plenty of jobs you can do ok with ... and not actually be interested in it.

Programming is just a really hard one to do if you're not interested, possibly only because of the number of people who ARE interested (or at least some point were and they got to the point they could actually just surf along).

According to my father, the business world in my country is currently experiencing difficulties finding talent because, in the words of his bosses, "young people today are too soft and quit when things get slightly difficult".

While there are many other factors here that I don't want to get into (such as loyalty being a two-way street and so on), I often wonder whether the idea of "this is not a hobby, it's a job" might have a bit of truth in it. At the end of the day, honest work is better than no work, and we all have to be adults at some point at start pulling our weight.

Would I prefer everyone to have UBI and work only if they want to? Definitely. But not everyone can be passionate about what they do (is anyone really passionate about packing items for Amazon?) and I guess sometimes you draw the short stick.

I grew up doing everything the hard way, self taught holding my own with highly educated peers and spending years on very hard problems to build a future worth having.

I am still doing it the hard way but vastly preferring doing it for myself, instead of for ungrateful bosses that pay penny on the dollar for the privilege to ignore their employees and only ever do something to fix unfulfilled promises when people have already been burnt and it’s too late. I’ve heard again and again from peers that bosses only come round to shitty situations when good working employees threaten to leave and by then it’s too late.

This time it’s the bosses drawing the short stick and they are complaining like they are entitled to employees. You want people to stay? Make it happen, don’t whine.

I have been in management, I know what it takes. Man up.

> is anyone really passionate about packing items for Amazon?

Yes, you can! At least for a short time. I went to New Zealand on a working holiday visa. I did a lot of odd jobs there. I did fruit picking for about one month. First I thought it will be boring, but it turned out really satisfying. You can start optimizing each step of the process, shave down a few seconds here and there, finding better ways to do things. In the end, me and my girlfriend were in the top 5 five with some Japanese people (they are crazy fast), and on average we picked and packed 2-3 times more than the average.

I just want to point out some seemingly boring jobs can be satisfying.

I read a lot of horror stories about Amazon. It won't work with the current way, but that is a good thing. Amazon will have to upper their workplace standard otherwise nobody going to work there.

You know, I'm reminded of the way the CCC conferences are run. Basically, everything (except the toilet cleaners I think) is done by volunteers (aka the people visiting the conferences). I think usually about a third of the attendants do at least a little bit.

You just sign up in the system and choose a shift. Some jobs need an introduction and your account is cleared for them once you attended. If you meet a certain amount of shifts worked you get a t-shirt and preference at next-year-ticket purchases.

What you usually see is even the people with the menial jobs getting really into them as well. The ushers will experiment with new routing to make it faster, the people running the checkroom will optimize the hell out of it and have a competition with the next shift.. it's good fun.

This works because a) they want the whole endeavor to be a success, b) they are allowed to freely fulfill the roles and experiment, c) nobody in particular and everyone in total profits from the work done, d) you can pick up one shift or 20, it's up to you and surely a couple more.

I think it is possible to be passionate about packaging items for sure, but not like this. So I wouldn't say it's impossible to run society with UBI, but it will have to look quite different.

An older colleague of mine a few years back used to come out with some philosophical pearls of wisdom from time to time for us young'uns. I remember him saying once: 'Of course it's not going to be easy all the time - that's why they call it work'.

That sounds like a job for a mental health specialist. There are psychological reasons underlying the initial interests and the subsequent fading of interest, and the right specialist will be able to identify those and use them to guide you down the path to sticking to something.

Speaking as a mental health specialist:

No that is not. We treat disease. Pretending we can fine-tune personality traits is quackery, and no respectable mental health specialist would lay claim to that.

But don’t worry - quacks abound, and they even take your insurance.

I was more thinking that not finding enjoyment in anything would be indicative of depression and that would be something that a mental health specialist can help a person navigate.

I think most people have a capacity for introspection, but some need more direction than others to actually do it and connect the dots. So maybe a core personality trait is largely unchangeable, but being able to recognize its existence and zero in on how it is affecting your life can lead to some real breakthroughs.

I don't know if the best person to help someone through this process of introspection is a psychologist or a life coach or a spiritual director or a teacher or a stranger in a coffee shop, but it seems like there's a place for it somewhere.

How does one go about identifying a non-quack in your field? I’m in the market and I’ve been disappointed with the 2 I’ve seen...

My wife is a therapist, her suggestion is to go call up the largest local University and talk to folks in their psych department for recommendations.

They're usually much more science driven and grounded.

To be fair though, a part of ADHD can manifest itself this way. From what I've read it's a pretty common complaint that people with ADHD have trouble doing things they're not interested in. In a lot of those cases you also hear about how their interests change all the time.

Not really enough information to base a diagnosis on and not that I would be qualified to do so, but the thought certainly crossed my mind that the poster might consider being tested. Lack of interest and lack of maintained interest is certainly in the realm of possibility. Unlike other psychotropic meds, ADHD meds have a fairly high success rate and a rapid onset of effective treatment. Pretty much with one dose a person can tell if they are going to work for them or not. For most that suffer it's like night and day.

I am not really sure a mental health specialist can help you if nothing interests you. It's difficult to imagine every human being having interest in making something. A lot of people may just want to live a chill life.

Unfortunately, UBI is very far away, so whether something interests you or not, you got to pick up the least worst choice and get on with it.

I'd find it more strange if something did interest people for over 40/50 years. Trains for example - that's a long time to be interested in trains!

This.

I recall clearly how amazing mini quadcopters were to me! I bought some, I wrote 3D models and designed my own 3D printable chassis, I even made one from ground up, with FPV camera and all! I built and flew (until destruction) maybe 20 or 25 quads, it was all I did, all day, for 2 months. Now there's a box of spare parts and unfinished related projects that I won't touch before the day I decide to throw it all in the big "electronics junk" bin for use in future projects.

What you did sounds amazing! Yet I’m getting a tone from your comment that reveals some kind of disappointment in yourself. Reminds me of this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22792829. Check out the book mentioned in the top comment (Refuse to Choose), it may resonate with you. It certainly resonated with me after reading it recently.

This is a really interesting question and I'd love to know what other people think of it.

I think you have to constantly be reading and learning about things on your periphery. It can take a long time before your interest in something is strong enough to decide to do it for a living.

interest <-> spending time on something

these feed off of each other. No one is born liking spreadsheets or birthing or insects or woodworking.

when you're young, spend time immersed in different things. some will naturally fit better than others, and you'll see possibilities open up. not everyone has that luxury, however.

I mean, yes, that's possible, it's also possible there are some cognitive limitations that have a substantial impact. I've certainly breezed through a lot of things in school and work that I thought was boring, that others struggled with. I'm far from a genius, perhaps in the smartest 25% quartile, that's all. But we shouldn't discount the fact that there'll be some in the least 25% quartile who have different experiences, regardless of their interest level.

Yes, perseverance really matters, and that comes either from interest or grit. But it's not always enough. It can be a lot of fun practising guitar for 8 hours a day if, after a few months, you feel you're making some progress. It's not fun, if even after a few months of long hours of practice, you forgot the concepts from the beginning. Passion only goes so far, we shouldn't romanticise failure too much. Sometimes it just isn't a good fit and sometimes that's because of limitations.

That having been said, not trying to dismiss your point, it could very well be that the person is intellectually capable enough, but just doesn't think programming is fun. But I wouldn't take that as a given and in all honestly, it doesn't seem like the most likely case either.

I don't think I'm stupid, but I do believe that most people have a sort of "ceiling" in regards to their capabilities, intellectual or otherwise. I'm mostly curious about what to do when those something they're interested in's fall outside of your capability.

This is interesting to me. I used to be very "into" agent-based computation economics - trying to synthesize macro from micro. And small-worlds neetworks and the intersection, and a a fair amount of systems biology.

After a blow to the head that caused some noticable brain damage and loss of IQ points, I'm still interested, but it's a LOT harder! I remember thinking much vaster thoughts than I can think now.

Which sucks, actually. But I don't actually know what I can and cannot do, or what I am not willing to work hard enough to achieve, because before, I didn't ever have to work for it, you know?

Programming itself, though, say Genetic Programming or embedded systems for video codec for satellites or the such is still simple enough, so I guess I should be grateful for that! :-)

When it comes to recognizing patterns in programming and such, I have a couple questions:

* did you ever go to college for programming? if not, a lot of the 'patterns' people see were beaten into their heads in college, so that's something that can be helped :)

* have you ever done competitive programming, like TopCoder problems (the old ones. Last I checked, TopCoder has gotten WAY over my head and probably a lot of other people's heads, too)?

Doing programming problems can be a great way to flex those muscles and see common patterns in code and problems you need to solve. It might be able to really help you :)

Topcoder is the one a lot of people know, but there's others out there. I kinda liked this one, and it's used as a recruiting tool, too: https://app.codility.com/programmers/

Never went to school, i did have an brief experience with competitive programming back in HS, but didn't do very well.

Oh! Well then there you go! Let's get you sitting down and doing algorithm stuff! It may help you a ton! Honestly, it's a lot of boring stuff, but the idea is to get your brain thinking in a different way :)

You wrote "writing and maintaining simple CRUD apps, and to be honest I hate it. Its mind numbingly boring and I certainly dont want to spend my life doing that".

This has nothing to do with hitting the ceiling of your capabilities. You don't like the things you're doing. I don't even see any reason to say you don't like programming, just that you don't like what you're doing now.

> You wrote "writing and maintaining simple CRUD apps, and to be honest I hate it. Its mind numbingly boring and I certainly dont want to spend my life doing that".

> This has nothing to do with hitting the ceiling of your capabilities.

He also wrote "I fail to understand, fail to recognize patterns, am too slow to understand simple concepts and never retain anything. Occasionally understand the individual concepts of something but then her completely lost when they're all combined in some applied method."

That follows from the part I quoted. It would be very unusual for someone to be good at a task they know they don't want to do and that they find mind numbingly boring.

No it wouldn't. That's the entire concept of working on an assembly line.

Whether you're good at something is not strongly related to whether you like doing it.

It might not be so strongly related in contexts like assembly lines where the skill involved is either minimal or extremely easy to acquire (e.g. learn how to operate machine or follow a 3-step quality inspection), not to mention the repetition involved which kind of guarantees that anyone will eventually 'get the hang of it'. If my job was one task, I'd get good at after some time even if I hate.

In contrast, being good at jobs that require 'thinking slow' (reference to Daniel Kahneman's book) and creating solutions to new problems every single day usually require motivation or perseverance if you wish. These are more or less measures of interest and if you don't agree, then they are at least strongly related to interest.

> have a sort of "ceiling" in regards to their capabilities, intellectual or otherwise.

I refuse to believe that. It depends how much motivation, discipline and perseverance you have. The human mind is capable of anything! If there's something that you think it falls your capacity is because you haven't put considerable effort on the task that you're trying to achieve. And if you think you have set a truly high bar, then try achieving less intimidating tasks, even if you aren't successful for the original task you've set for the learning journey can even be more rewarding.

Outside an actual developmental disorder, I wouldn't really agree with this statement. Engineering is certainly easier for some people than for others, but the ones to whom it comes easy don't always make the best engineers. I've known several successful engineers who really struggled in the early stages of their education/career, but stuck it out through some combination of drive and stubbornness.

And they're way better at the get-stuff-done style of the world.

I'm one of those people who doesn't have trouble understanding things, but a LOT of trouble doing things and I look at the people that have the grit to just push forward and man, I envy their work ethic and focus. It's incredible, truly, how it seems like they can just keep plowing through rough stuff and come out with a solution that works.

It may not be the pie-in-the-sky prettiest; but, it works. It works well enough; and, if you're at a small company, it may have literally saved your business.

I would strongly agree with this — learning and retention for me come easily when I’m interested, but are near impossible when I feel it’s irrelevant or I’m just not interested. Whether or not I’m gifted in something I’m interested in doesn’t really matter (and my suggestion is to not worry about this) since my interest gives me the perseverance and patience to learn and do well regardless of innate skill.

I'd second that, somewhat. The things I'd consider myself to be good at are the things I care about. I can still quite clearly distinguish between personal and "business" interests, and don't feel a blurriness between both if I do not want them to blurr, but it is the one thing that has helped me (apart from being at the right time at the right place) to progress in my career.

What I'd take away from what both godelski and me are saying (if I were you): Find topics that sound interesting to you, dig your heels in, learn about those, play with the concepts. 9 times out of 10 something will come out of it, and if its just yourself understanding better what you're actually looking for.

Yeah, I guess the real question here is "do you love programming?" If you do you can make it work, it's a matter of not giving up and instead tweaking your learning system, practicing more and better, etc. If you don't you need to find another area.

Programming is a very demanding trade, and I don't think you can do it just for the paycheck, you need to have some degree of passion for it. If someone disagrees with me about this I'd love to hear different takes.

> Programming is a very demanding trade, and I don't think you can do it just for the paycheck, you need to have some degree of passion for it. If someone disagrees with me about this I'd love to hear different takes.

Consider that many people out there are doing repetitive and demanding physical labor "just for the paycheck". I'm sure those people would love to trade with someone who is sitting at the desk for 8 hours and earning 4-5x the amount, even if they had to do nothing but pressing the same button the whole time.

> Programming is a very demanding trade, and I don't think you can do it just for the paycheck, you need to have some degree of passion for it. If someone disagrees with me about this I'd love to hear different takes.

There are more people writing programs as a daily grind for a paycheck than as passionate artisans practicing their craft, and it's only getting more so as "CS" becomes an increasingly blue-collar field.

What you said strikes me as a rather dated view of programming. It was certainly more true back when just to operate a computer required significant resources, skill, and perseverance. It used to be such a horribly tedious, time-consuming chore to program them, that it often required something like passionate interest to stick it through.

Not sure what you're disagreeing with. I don't think the person you're responding to thinks it's /impossible to get a gig as a programmer for a while, but that it's not going to yield a fulfilling career if one is merely chasing a paycheck. I think that's about right.

> Programming is a very demanding trade, and I don't think you can do it just for the paycheck, you need to have some degree of passion for it. If someone disagrees with me about this I'd love to hear different takes.

I don't have any different abstract or psychological take on it, I just know people who have programmed for 30 years who don't love it now, and some who never loved it and always wished they were doing something more interesting. They are also perfectly good programmers, who work because they get paid for it rather than some spiritual edification.

Agreed.

Another factor, though, is that the interest generated from programming can be related to the thing a person is working on. A crescent wrench would be a boring object if all you did was wack it against the ground. But if it becomes a critical feature in constructing something, one probably acquires an interest. I can say that there are many things within this general field of playing-with-computers that I have previously found uninteresting, and now am quite fascinated about, but only because I've found uses. I've also been painfully unenthusiastic about some assigned work.

I'd also find it unlikely that humans in general are not interested in "making things," and insofar as programming/software is a vehicle for this, do possess an intrinsic potential to explore the field and acquire an interest. But the field rewards the independent-minded, as it's mostly through your own work, on your own projects, that generate a lasting interest (I believe).

Disagree. "Do you love programming" is as useless a question as "do you love digging". Loving to dig holes is not a good nor sufficient reason to dig holes all day every day. It just ends up being Sisyphean and pointless.

You need a reason to do things. A problem to solve, because people are problem solving machines. We make up problems if we don't have any at hand. Games are made up problems. But making things better in some way, is the best and most motivating kind of problems people can have.

So don't program for programming sake's, program to solve a problem that you care about.

I'll bite. I used to enjoy programming just for the fun of it. By that I mean the satisfaction of getting the machine to do what I wanted it to do (never mind the huge psychoanalysis of emotional neglect here). I would still write programs that interested me, but the satisfaction tended to come from making it work. Imagine making games but not really caring to play them.

I've moved past that. I still write software but now it's more a means to an end. It's best if I'm working on something I care about and code is just how to get there.

It's not all one or the other though. I started learning Rust and that's kinda cool on it's own because it's no so tedious as C++. Point is that my interest in writing code has shifted a lot and I still do it.

I’ve seen enough colleagues who are just in it for the money and found a niche inside the company that avoids anything demanding. In that regard you can work in a mind numbing fashion that other, often lower paid, professions also have. I wouldn’t recommend it though because the trouble comes when switching jobs can’t be avoided.

This describes me to a certain degree, and it's perfectly doable. I'm sure a lot of people do this, and I think a lot of the "find something you love" kind of posts are idealistic and unrealistic. I used to love software when I was younger and it was fresh and I still thought I might be a genius who could do something amazing, but then I went it to the real world and discovered that I was fairly average in what I did and, much importantly, anything you do for 40 hours a week becomes boring and a drag. That's why I keep my real interests and hobbies to my spare time where they're limited in time so they can't get boring. But at the same time this means I will never get that good at anything.

There are a small percentage of folk who are really good at programming and are at the bleeding edge making really cool stuff but for the vast majority it's just brick laying for a wage, which I think is fine but programming is exhausting so it's hard to find comfort and not burn out. I manage by having found cool guys to work with so it's a good laugh. I do wonder what I'll do when I finally just don't have the mental resilience to write code anymore and have to find another job.

Agreed. Interest breeds talent and competence. Interest may come from a deeper sense of purpose. The truth will set you free.

My intuition is that you’d get more out of therapy than a career change right now. This sounds more like burnout or a lack of interest to me. But framing it as a lack of intelligence says a lot about how you view yourself, which could make a career change much harder than it needs to be.

I'd like to elaborate on this, and strongly urge OP to see a psychiatrist.

The answer to your dilemma might be a new career. It might be cognitive behavioral therapy. It also might be an SSRI or modafinil.

I have my guesses but they aren't at all interesting, the point is to get in touch with a professional who can help you figure this out.

What you're experiencing isn't normal, or inevitable, and it doesn't mean you're not intelligent. Although hey, you might not be, how would I know? I think that's the least likely explanation out of all of them.

How modafinil might help? As treatment of potential undiagnosed ADHD?

Yeah, distinct possibility IMHO.

It's possible, though I don't know you, that you're too smart to be a programmer.

And maybe "programmer" is the problem. Be a _____ who can also code. Zed Shaw said it best in the final pages of learn python the hard way. Programming as a career is rarely fulfilling to anyone. But being a teacher/doctor/librarian/entrepreneur/warehouse worker/farmer/etc. that can code is a super power.

I'm basically talking to myself with this pep talk so I appreciate you bringing it up but.. let's both go find the thing that we like and apply programming to that thing!

This. My own suspicion is that you the OP is highly intelligent and recognizes all of these weaknesses due to his own intelligence rather than a lack of it.

I can relate to some of these things in a way. When I was 15 I tried to teach myself TC++. I got hung up on pointers and thought that I just wasn't smart enough to understand them. Many years later I had somebody who helped me understand pointers and I realized that I just wasn't interested in learning past that point.

I had kicked myself many times for not following through on learning TC++. I thought that I was too dumb to be a programmer. Turns out I just don't want to be a programmer! Sure I can bash script pretty well and I can knock together some PHP to do something if I absolutely have to or even a little python, but I only get out those tools when I neede them to accomplish a primary goal.

It turns out that I'm quite good at writing, teaching, and identifying areas where specific tools can help the people who I am teaching. So I write, teach, and build tools as needed.

And just because I do them in bash or do them poorly in Python doesn't mean that I'm bad at programming. It just means it's not where my strengths are and that I focus on what I am good at and love doing.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is that you aren't a bad programmer. You're just better and more interested in something else and you need to figure out what that thing is and pursue it and put programming on the back burner as a superpower as was mentioned in the previous comment above this one.

> but I only get out those tools when I neede them to accomplish a primary goal.

Actually, I think this might be an interesting thing for the OP to look into in itself.

Since in my experience, people's interest in any field tends to fall along a spectrum between 'does it for the art/sake of it' and 'does it to achieve a certain goal'.

If you're the latter, then of course you're likely to struggle with a lot of tutorials, since you don't see the value in the end result. Why would I learn about some new code organisation setup to build this dummy notes app when I have absolutely zero need/interest in a notes app? If you're that kind of thinker, you'll struggle to maintain interest in many tutorials simply because there's no real payoff for them beyond 'build some useless crap nobody needs'.

Ad it may explain the lack of interest in work too. Some people just cannot enjoy working on things they themselves have no passion for. If that's the case, the OP may be best served by looking for a company that is working on something they have a personal interest in.

As said, that doesn't make for a bad programmer (or a bad anything in any field). It just means you've got a different incentive structure to people who create stuff for the sake of it.

I appreciate this insight so much. I'm in the thick of working through the feelings of failure that are associated with an honest preference. There is a voice in my head that says "you're a failure" or "you just can't hack it" when I honestly just don't have the preference to keep learning in that direction.

Someone else in this thread mentioned therapy and that has helped me immensely in this pursuit but.. It also helps to relate to other people in the same situation.

May we all feel some peace!

Also, you raised a point that is very relevant - you couldn't understand pointers when you were 15, but now you do.

There is some level of cognitive maturity required to understand new ideas. I understood pointers somewhat from school, but it really made sense to me once I learned about computer architecture in more detail.

Sometimes you need to see the whole picture to understand why an element is present there and usually that happens only if you stay long enough with a problem/concept.

On the other hand though, could you say that someone's interests are to a degree dictated by their capabilities? It seems to me like the distinguishing factor between someone who is interested in a challenging field vs. someone who is not, is that the person interested often understands the material to a degree that maybe the other person is unable to. For them studying and doing the work may take substantially less effort and thus their interest continues, even when things become difficult.

This is probably why many programmers are uninterested in your chosen field of teaching.

TLDR, isn't "disinterest" often a cognitive bias driven by some subconscious estimation that we're unable to do something?

I think this affects everyone, a lot.

Yes, and! Things are often less black and white than this. The more I dig into what I think I want, the more influences I find. I want to impress my parents, I want to provide a super safe and comfortable life for my partner, I want people to notice the company I work for and smile and think I'm smart. As I take the time to pull those things apart, and wow does it take time, the call to teach and write is quieter but maybe truer? I don't know. I have to test it out.

TL;DR I think disinterest is driven by a combination of capability and soul AND (sometimes very loud) outside influences.

Well the flip side is that being a programmer can get you access to a lot of interesting fields, especially fields which don't have an abundance of technically savvy people. These also tend to be fields that have strong humanitarian impact, or utility. I like solving people's problems and I can do that through code.

Lots of people work as software consultants. It's really no different from physical trades - you know your tools, people come to you with problems, you solve them.

I do think a big factor is choosing what you work on though. It's a lot less fun if your projects are dictated to you, unless you happen to really enjoy your field.

> Programming as a career is rarely fulfilling to anyone.

I think this is unnecessarily controversial. "Rarely to anyone" needs evidence. Plenty of happy programmers around.

I get your (or Zed Shaw's?) point though. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be a programmer, but programming for the sake of programming is a fast way to get bored or to burn out. Programming is a tool. It doesn't hold inherent value without being applied to a particular problem. So find problems that you would like solved, or at least find out what sort of problems you enjoy solving.

I definitely should have clarified my statement further as I agree with yours and you seem to disagree with mine. Let's go with yours.

"... programming for the sake of programming is a fast way to get bored or to burn out."

That's exactly right.

>I'm basically talking to myself with this pep talk so I appreciate you bringing it up but.. let's both go find the thing that we like and apply programming to that thing!

Good way to put it. Programming is not a end in itself, it's a tool like many other that we use to navigate the sh*t called life.

My advice in this situation is:

1. Keep your job for now. This is a good time to have a paycheck. Think of it as chores to pay the mortgage. Maybe you'll get a dishwasher later, but for now the dishes gotta get washed.

2. Find a psychiatric or clinical psychologist and have yourself evaluated for mental illness. This is actually really important. Unlike physical problems where it's sometimes obvious ("I can't read the billboard by the road, I probably need glasses."), mental issues can make subjective impressions unreliable or misleading.

> I fail to understand, fail to recognize patterns, am too slow to understand simple concepts and never retain anything. Occasionally understand the individual concepts of something but then her completely lost when they're all combined

Too slow compared to what? Fail to recognize based on how many exposures? Taken together this feels like a learning disability that makes you slow to internalize material in the standard way, and you're not building up the mastery of the fundamentals enough before trying to combine them. Again, psychological evaluation is the way to go.

Also, don't look for work where you love it all the time. No one's going to pay you for that. What you're after is work that you can do and feel some basic satisfaction when you put it down for the day instead of being cast into a downward spiral by it.

You also are allowed to have other stuff that provides the meaning and enrichment for their lives. In fact, you should.

Yeah the good news is that if you find CRUD apps mind numbing then you are definitely smart enough to be a programmer.

Sooo... right now thanks to covid19 basically every class at your local community college is online try a GIS class, it's a little bit python, a little bit SQL, a little bit data science-y and sometimes you go fly a drone around.

Or you know something else, the point is there's plenty of fields that aren't explicitly tech adjacent that the ability to program at all gives you a somewhere between a head start and superpowers.

BUT also I'm with the other guys too, maybe talk to a therapist.

Do you actually suck at this or do you have a great case of impostor syndrome (perhaps a pattern you're failing to recognize?)? You might be surprised at where you'd rank compared to the general population.

As far as retaining things, there's an awful lot of stuff where you don't need to remember the details - knowing something exists lets you go find details when needed, and the more useful items will stick with you after you start using them regularly. I'll use trees as an example - there are more different kinds of trees and ways to implement them than you can shake a stick at, but most programmers aren't going to need to implement any of them ever. Do you need to remember details about balancing, etc? Probably not.

> knowing something exists lets you go find details when needed

Thank you for this, it's a nice concise way to explain that even the experienced use Google all of the time.

I am something you could consider smart; wrote first program as 6 years old, gave talks at conferences, worked on crypto-concesus algos, now I do research oriented consulting.

Some points:

- pattern recognition is basic brain function and everyone has it

- you need PERFECT health to be smart; check testosterone, sleep, weight, nofap, exercise etc.. 90% people have brain fog for some stupid fixable reason

- there is nothing wrong with CRUD app maintenance if you make good money. Challenge is nice, but gets old very fast, unless it is a hobby.

- avoid relationship until your life is in order. Huge time sink and ruins concentration.

- stop reading crap (politics, twitter... )

> I am something you could consider smart

Oh boy.

> 90% people have brain fog for some stupid fixable reason

[citation needed]

> avoid relationship until your life is in order. Huge time sink and ruins concentration.

A healthy social/romantic life is never a time-sink, unless you're extremely short-sighted.

Avoiding relationships is one of the dumbest ways to fight dissatisfaction.

> avoid relationship until your life is in order. Huge time sink and ruins concentration.

I understood that some relationships can bring a unbelievable chaos in your live. Been there, done that.

But I think it's very very important part of your life and you can't really have your life "in order" if this question is left unsolved.

To be honest, this advice is a little prescriptive and facile, and you self admit that it's pretty limited. Giving talks at a conference, working on crypto-consensus algos and research-oriented consulting -- none of that really puts you through the experience of owning something long term which customers use. That's not to say I'd disagree with it (certainly not a be all end all). The inclusion of nofap and relationship avoidance is a little prudish and odd, but I can understand the draw of intentionally ascetic focus. Nutrition is 100% an often underestimated thing when it comes to productivity -- calibrating your diet pays dividends when it comes to maintaining productivity. Finally, the note that pattern recognition is basic brain function and everyone has it is true, the exhortion to stop reading crap like politics and twitter is probably correct if you binge read it and don't consume it in a healthy manner, and who really does? What you're saying is that there are a lot of things that are inside your control. What's really here to disagree with?

If we read between the lines here, it's clear that the OP is struggling not with what they were literally describing (somehow not being smart enough) and instead something different (burnout and maybe depression). And, if that's the case, then, as another commentator noted, "mental issues can can make subjective impressions unreliable or misleading" -- if this is the case, planning for increased productivity and mental hygiene (as wonderful as that all is) is probably not going to be a very useful next step. The next step is addressing the root cause, which is career dissatisfaction, potentially early career dissatisfaction.

First of all, OP, do you enjoy the labor and lifecycle of permanently helping your customers solve their problems? It's okay if you don't particularly care about the customers you are serving now while on the job -- you can change that. It's okay if you're not the star producer for the team -- you're still early on in your career, and so you're still learning to how to produce like a professional. What's important is that you at least somehow like the act of problem solving for customers, and that you are orienting yourself correctly to ensure you remain growing. It sounds like you feel like you're not growing anymore, or that you're stuck.

Why aren't you growing anymore? Is it a feeling, or a measurable issue with a very specific metric boundaries where it wouldn't be an issue? Are you running into problems inside your company or team? Do you think it would still be there if you were on a different team, or one at a different company? Do you think your issues have to do with purely internal factors or a mixture of both? Anywhere in between here could be possible, but if you're early career, just know that having experience at multiple companies really reduces a lot of ambiguity into things. Don't back project your identity in stone based off of a single work experience. Companies are a lot more chaotic free-for-alls than they are well run meritocracies, so it's not always easy to accurately trace back your track directly to your capability. Of course, as you do gather more data, you will be able to detect patterns and trends, but they'll be specific to you as a person. I think that's why it's important to work with a professional or in other way focus on healing if you're at the point of feeling burnt out, which is necessarily something that you have to spend some dedicated time recovering from (having been there before, it has taken me months before). For some folks, it can even be years.

First of all, you need to find a new job. Even if the new one doesn't work out, you need to collect data and experiences about what it's like at different companies. There's a world of difference between a stagnating train-car, a sinking ocean liner, and rocket ship. Once you've been on more than one and can figure out what kind of a situation you're in based on pattern recognition, it gets easier. You'll learn to figure out what you like and what you don't like. I aslo agree with the poster who says speak with a professional. It will take effort to find a good one, but keep at it. It's really worth it. There are so many things I used to think were insurmountable, or which were things about myself that were fixed in stone which I could never change, and that just really wasn't true. It took patience, mental flexibility, persistence and a lot of individual failures to end up getting to progress and momentum. If I had let individual setbacks permanently stop me, it would have been impossible to have gotten to where I am now. Don't give up.

There is nothing in this comment that strikes me as real. Not only was it completely unnecessarily to condescendingly talk about how allegedly smart you are, the points you gave sound like they came straight out of a wantrepreneur youtuber's vlog.

I think OP struggles with concentration, this could fix that.

Not sure what was condescending. And I am smart, my mother had me tested ;)

As it was said elsewhere, you present yourself as the stupid person version of a smart person. Maybe it is true, maybe it is not.

Diagnosis: bored.

See other comments on interest. I'll address your thoughts. You're speaking casually, but your exaggerations can be dangerous when you're vulnerable:

> nothing sticks.

Not literally true that "nothing" sticks, since you later mention things you recall.

> I fail to understand, fail to recognize patterns

There's partial understanding and levels of understanding. You can notice progress by comparing your present understanding with before.

> am too slow to understand simple concepts

Here you admit you do gain understanding, but dismiss it. What is the threshold for fast enough?

> and never retain anything.

Again, not literally true that "nothing" is retained.

> Occasionally understand the individual concepts of something but then her completely lost when they're all combined in some applied method.

Again, you admit understanding, but dismiss it because of difficulty in the next step. Also, "completely" lost is not literally true.

---

These casual exaggerations are dangerous when you start to believe them, because they aren't literally true. Changing them won't solve the problem completely, but you'll see it more clearly and that helps to solve it! Advice:

  notice what you _have_
  retained/understood/applied
  (especially in contrast with before)

[But the real problem is boredom]

We only live once! Respect yourself and your feelings! Don't waste your energy listening to opinions of how you are supposed to feel, they are not you! People love to throw the buzz word around as if coding is the best thing ever...! The end users don't care! Employeers don't care! The people you create this things for don't care about how you feel! Find something that makes you happy and has a meaning in yours and other people's life! Beware that a lot of the people that tells you to take a break and that you're just tired, are not that sympathetic when you'd try to get back to the job market, where they'd ask you to go through 5 stage interviews and totally waste your time for no other reason then their own bullshit job. Be careful!

If you do want to try later on and do something related with tech, not necessarily as a coder, have in mind the bizarre startup world! A lot of people get funding for simple business ideas! So try to live a fulfilling life and if you ever want to comeback do your own business and create a nice work environment for your team!

Hard to offer any kind of constructive advice without some indication of your personality or what you do enjoy.

I'm skeptical of the idea that you're not smart enough. In my experience, becoming a good programmer requires some relatively low-threshold capacity for logical thinking combined with a tenacity for debugging and understanding how things work. Being a genius who picks up math and CS concepts quickly is far from required.

If you struggle with patterns and applications but are bored by simple CRUD apps then it may be the case that you just don't like programming that much. That would certainly make it very difficult to learn and retain anything.

Overall though, you sound more depressed than anything. If that is the case then it colors all perception of what you enjoy or don't enjoy, and probably should be addressed directly before making any major career decisions.

The only fun I've ever had programming was making video games.

You don't have to be super smart to make games and I don't think you even have to like them. It's more the rich visual feedback that makes it fun. A game engine is like a giant virtual playground for your code.

And in video games there isn't really a "right way" to do anything. There are always weird problems to solve and hacky solutions are fun and even expected. It's the only programming where I've had some laugh out loud moments, like "why are the trees inside out and spinning around?"

There are some great game dev postmortems where you learn about the beautiful horrors going on behind the scenes to make a vision a reality. Game dev is forgiving like that. From the book 3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development: "If it looks right, it is right".

I don't think you are supposed to "find your dream job" or whatever. Work is just a slice of life, and I think you should try to find something outside work that makes you happy (art? forming a serious relationship and devoting yourself to it? anything, really). If you are so lucky that you work in IT, you don't have to do much more than the minimum to live a relatively comfortable life, and be able to concentrate on things outside of your work. That world is much bigger, and you surely can find something that makes you feel fulfilled.

It's interesting to me that you say you did software development as a hobbyist before you made it your job. So presumably there was something that interested you enough to pursue it in your spare time. It would be interesting to know more about what does interest you, as opposed to the things that don't. Maybe you could provide more info?

I agree with commentators who say software development can be a terrible job if you aren't really interested in it. I knew a lot of young consultants at Accenture when I worked there in the early 90s who hated the programming roles they were expected to do for the first couple of years. But most of them were not from comp sci backgrounds, and wanted to move into management consulting roles as quickly as possible.

Based on your comments about having trouble learning and generalizing, it sounds like you might be happier in a more process-oriented role. Or maybe you would be happier in a role that was more focused on personal interaction?

Even CRUD apps can have fun stuff: APIs, live GUI updates for everyone else logged in when a user makes a change, security (both designing and pentesting), building your own toolbox for accelerating development of the next one, usage monitoring etc. Some of these will impress clients and make your superior recognize you as a talent. This will make it more fun and open up new possibilities all by itself.

just to add in -

you're not slow, you're probably average. When you start working, all the things you can learn in a weekend quickly evaporate within 1-2 years of your working career. The only things left to learn are those that take 3 months or more.

These things take the right mindset to learn - continuing to think about them, tackle them, ignoring failure and coming back to it over and over because that's the nature of 3 month learning projects.

You may think you're stupid but you're probably average for a programmer. I do agree with the rest of the thread, you're lacking the spark - the thing that other people have that allows them to persist despite the challenge to figure it out.

Take a personality test, like MBTI, and use it to figure out your preferences. Introverted Feelers are usually smart enough (NFs) to do programming but hate it, it could describe yourself.

MBTI is pseudoscience without any empirical backing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...

Really the only personality test with any strong empirical backing is the Big Five test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

All other personality tests reduce down to the Big Five when you try to test for co variance.

The exercise is about finding a language that you can use to describe your shared values. For that use case MBTI is perfectly fine.

Sadly most people aren't particularly enthusiastic about their work, which is probably a huge waste of human potential, but it's not an unusual situation to be working just to pay the bills. Paying bills is good.

It's probably a good idea to keep your day job while you develop interests outside of work and investigate other job options. School can be good, but it can also saddle you with expensive student loans that take several decades to pay off.

HI, have you been screened for ADHD/ADD? A number of the things you've said sound familiar to me. ADHD (generally) gets worse as you get older.

Do art. Find passion. Do passion.

Or,

Find love. Have children. Be a great parent.

Coding is just a tool, a means to an end, not a career. If you don't like using a keyboard/multimeter/hammer, don't work in an area that requires a keyboard/multimeter/hammer.

Painting and parenting can both be very rewarding, and make you very happy over a lifetime.

As for money, enough to get by, can be enough. Life doesn't have to be about ways to get money.

yes, i tend to agree with the passion-part of this.

use your free time to do things that excite you, things that motivate you.

a job is a job. you need it to pay the bills. if you can do a job that pays well and you can work in reasonable comfort, appreciate it. there a terrible jobs out there, be glad you don't have to do those.

but you also need passion to avoid getting burned out. if you can't find it in your job, find it in your life, in your hobbies, in your relations.

your job should just be a means to an end. it should support your private life: food, a roof over your head, security and your passions.

maybe visit a therapist to work out what triggers and excites you.

a change of scenery (changing your job) might help for a short while, but unless you work on the underlying issue, the problem will catch up and follow you around.

I had friends drop out of CS degree or IT career - they each went on to become successful at health & safety, physical education, statistics and formal project management. Theres limitless options but narrowing down your next move is the hard part... what aspects of work do you enjoy and perhaps go from there? dont kick yourself over choosing the wrong path, hindsight is 20:20

I am a software engineer. At least, that is what my job title says. However, I would also find coding CRUD apps boring as hell. What I really am is a problem solver. Currently, I solve problems using code. I think the trick is to get into a company that has problems that interest you. Personally, I work with hardware and embedded systems.

As for understanding new tools and techniques, I'm never able to do it unless I have a real problem that I'm working on that requires it. Toy problems and coding exercises won't work because the problem is contrived and isn't a real problem that needs fixing. Math, especially, is a wonderful tool, but I'm not interested in it for its own sake. This doesn't mean you are stupid.

So, figure out what you want to be doing and figure out who's doing it. If you are young enough to return to schooling, you are probably young enough to get an entry level position if your skills are a bit weak in the required area.

I started with programming as hobbyist. I never actually studied it (beside some basics which I already known when they teach me that).

I ended up writing CRUDs, various data converters and fixing bizzare bugs in legacy software. Slowly I lost interest in programming and I discovered that I am no longer interested in new tech. I completely missed javascript hype train for example.

But it's OK. It's just a job. I have other hobbies/friends to feel fullfilled.

Also - I keep programming as hobby. I just more interested WHAT I am doing instead HOW I am doing that (which is just usually easiest path).

For example - I really started digging into audio programming - basically coding my own VSTs in Csound/Cabbage. That's really interesting stuff and also sometimes very challenging, because it involves math which I am generally struggling with (I had diagnosed discalculia back at the school).

For example: I just spend two days (!) inventing this little piece of code: f(k,n) = (k * n) - (k-1)

How long have you been programming professionally? Do you think you are giving yourself a fair assessment based on how long you have been working in the industry? I ask to rule out the possibility that you are being hard on yourself or maybe have imposter syndrom. you say you find crud app building easy, this is not a statement which the general non-it population could say. Did you attend courses before working (university, college etc.)? Do you have good on the job mentorship or are you trying to figure everything out yourself? Do you have a person who is more senior who can give you honest constructive feedback and guidance?

If youve already made the decision you are leaving programming... Can you think of things you have enjoyed about your career to date (i.e. coding, testing, designing, meeting people etc)? and what was it that steered you towards the career in the first place?

Have you looked into computer networking and other IT-type topics? I’ve often found that networking specifically uses different skills and is suited for different people than programming. It’s more about systems, rather than logic, which (personally) I find more in-tune with my mental makeup.

I actually have thought about it, but I'm not sure if I could stand starting at the bottom of those fields, plus the salaries cap much lower.

You are smart enough to be a programmer, you just have misconceptions about what programmers are supposed to be.

All that really matters is if you can build things that work.

People who can do the above will get paid, can even be CTOs.

So what if Google wouldn't want you as a programmer, that's for a particular type of person.

Firm but necessary feedback:

When I read this I see me me me me me me me me me.

Think of things in terms of how you are helping others instead of so selfishly about yourself. The world doesn't exist to serve you. What are you expecting, some amazing job to fall down from the sky that is all about you and everything you want? Doesn't work that way! You need some career capital. What value can you provide in exchange for these things you are asking for? If you want an interesting and fun career you need to be skilled enough at something to counter balance the value you receive.

More concretely: there is a fantastic book called "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport. Give that a read and it will provide guidance and a new framework with which to see the world.

Do you enjoy creating stuff with the tools?

I've been interested in programming since I was a teen, but it was always the applied side - I enjoy building stuff, and the tools are just like any other tools you'd use.

I don't find the tools or methods particularly interesting, not nearly interesting enough to devote a huge part of my time to study them extensively.

And it was with that realization that I understood the following: I will never become a good computer scientist, theoretical or practical.

So my solution was simple: Do not chase, or focus jobs which require a passion or deep interest in computer science, because:

1) There are far more highly intelligent and highly passionate programmers out there, that are genuinely interested in the theory and technicalities. I will never be able to compete with those.

2) I will burn out spending my days on something which does not naturally interest me (enough to do it for min. 8 hours a day)

3) My energy should be directed at being more productive, where I can actually show good results. We have a finite amount of time to do something, so don't waste it.

All these realizations came during college. Some of my classmates would read books on compilers in their spare time, because they simply could not wait for the classes (which we had a year later).

Compilers are fascinating on a high level, but not fascinating enough for me to read whole books on them.

Furthermore - to me, proof of concept (and novelty) is more fascinating than the optimal solution.

There are lots of jobs for both types, you just need to find out what really tickles you, and follow that lead. As others have said, bridging fields ("businessman" and "developer", etc.) can be really rewarding.

Think of something that really interests you; Anything! And then try to find out how you can enhance that with development. Do it because it's fun, not because it's something you feel like forcing yourself to do.

I found myself in the same boat recently, and looking for jobs/roles which is half business, half tech. I looked into "Solutions Engineer", but a bit afraid I loose my ability to code.

What did you pursue? Any tips?

I pursued data science, It's a good blend of tech and domain knowledge.

The domain is what interests me, and the technical part is what makes it enjoyable. The amount of programming is probably one tenth (if even that) of what a regular software engineer would write, but there's always room for new ideas. Lately I've found myself writing more and more code for automation and other auxiliary stuff.

In the end you want to apply technical and scientific methods to the data, guided by your domain expertise, and deliver results to someone.

For some, it's nothing more than cleaning excel spreadsheets and generating reports, for others it's building and using state of the art machine learning methods on extremely large data sets - so not all data science jobs are alike from a technical standpoint.

I would be grateful you have a job; most software engineering jobs pay relatively well. Be grateful for this pay.

Find something outside of work that excites you if work doesn't excite you. Work isn't everything. If the actual thing you do at work doesn't excite you, try making friends at work who do excite you.

If writing simple CRUD apps is boring, it sounds like you actually have some aptitude afterall. If it's boring, try to find the sweet spot of challenge with capability. It sounds like you are capable of more than what you are doing now, so gravitate in that direction and move from there.

What subject excites you that doing a course on Coursera or Udemy, for example, doesn't make you feel like, "Groan, 6 hours a week x 6 weeks?!"? Do that course + talk on the Coursera forum with other students and reach out to folks in the industry who'd value seeing that certification on your resume / LinkedIn.

About feelings: you have to feel your feelings, but productivity is difficult if you're always feeling down. Don't beat up yourself, which adds a 2nd layer of sadness to an already sad situation. Get enough sleep and work on things that excite you.

Fear of change keeps you locked into misery. If at all possible take steps to get a new vision of your future and change careers, cos your current vision of your future is sounding pretty bleak (at least from your perspective).

If you need encouragement, try and find others stories of career change, and how they did it - there are plenty of them out there.... From https://www.ambisie.com/st/kerry-kitzelman :

"Some jobs can be like golden handcuffs. They pay well but you feel trapped by them. You are afraid to step out and make a change in case you wind up worse than before. Some jobs are like cardboard handcuffs, they pay nothing but you still allow yourself to be trapped by them because of fear of the unknown.

Making a decision to change may indeed result in your fears being realised, but facing that fear gives you the courage to overcome.

Since the day I decided to cut the umbilical cord to poorly paid employment, I have not been afraid to apply for any position I think I might enjoy and be rewarded for. It sometimes means steep learning curves and working harder than anyone else on your team, especially those that have the experience you don't. But the reward is that the world opens up to you. There is so much more opportunity than you could possibly have imagined."

If you like to work by your hands, there are vast amount of opportunities out there. And it's perfectly fine to pursue a career as an electrician or a cook et cetera. It may not be rocket science but with the satisfaction of getting things done and having satisfied customers and good co-workers, it can be fun.

But if you really can't think of anything that suits you or motivates you, then I think the problem is your own behavior and thinking patterns, that you need to change. You seem to have gotten stuck in a rut, so a nice break from it in a form of say school doesn't seem like a bad idea.

Don't however, let the fallacy of sunk cost misguide you. Just because you have been doing software development doesn't mean you can't switch to manual labour. Or that your next job has to be somehow related to your current. Listen to your own emotions and thoughts, don't let the past weight you down.

For example, that one very good programmer and Youtuber, bisqwit, actually works as a bus driver. Which I think is really encouraging in showing that even if you are really good at something (or you like to do as your hobby), doesn't mean you have to pursue it as your career.

It might help us to know what hobbies/interests you have. Do you like animals or plants? Getting involved in horticulture may be very good for your long term health. In fact, most people would benefit... https://blog.strong-brain.com/outdoors-for-physical-mental-h...

Figure out what makes you happy while you do the bare minimum and use your nights and free time to make it happen, It's hard to sludge you anything you don't like, and it's hard to tell someone "I hate my well paying career", without sounding ungrateful. Don't let yourself believe this is an intellectual fault, not being a technical person doesn't mean you're dumb.

I sense a frustration with status quo. As always it's a spectrum of causes. Job, or purpose may just be one. Important one, no doubt, but sometimes not the decisive one. Young hearts are movable, so are their minds, given enough interest either from within or from outside.

Being you, I'd first try to figure out how much money I need to feel comfortable. Then ask if I can afford to be less comfortable and for how long. Then I'd look if anyone else depends on me for their comfort.

Finally, I'd try to imagine what I'd do in my free time should I forget about all of the above. AND for how long would I be ready to stay oblivious in that.

If I see myself making money while doing that thing that I imagined, I try to write it down and later figure out a plan to make that happen... eventually.

Meanwhile, I'd take some rest and solve something approacheable. This will sure be a booster, to start believing that you've got that thing that you think matters in life. And you can make it better!

If you're employed as a programmer and not being fired for incompetence, then you are actually smart enough to be a programmer.

In more than 20 years of programming, I've never seen an incompetent programmer get fired.

I'd like to quote the inestimable and late Richard Feynman here.

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.”

“You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing.”

When was the last time you were working on something and lost track of time? This an indicator that you were in a flow state. Dont go for something you love doing - not everyone has that. Find something you can focus on, and that you can zone out while doing. This is honestly all most people can hope for.

This sounds kindof like a pathological mode of thinking I sometimes get into. So here’s what I do to escape that mode of thinking/feeling when I find myself in it. Hopefully it will help.

If you find yourself having trouble figuring something out, do not beat yourself up over how much trouble you’re having. That type of thought takes you down a really rough negative spiral.

Instead, focus on your desire and will to figure it out or get it done. Believe in your ability to figure it out and then go prove yourself right by using your will to do so to power the work that will get your where you want to go.

You have the power to pull yourself out of the rut, and you can get help from folks like counselors and peers too. But fundamentally, I have found that it takes a strong internal will to get out of a rut. I think that you can find that will and act upon it.

Certainly smart enough to do the vast majority of work in professional software dev which is basically CRUD, and smart enough to realize that it is easy and boring. I'd go back to school anyway and see of there's not some research in any other field you might be interested in.

Do you find you have problems concentrating and focusing on things that interest you? Also, do you by any chance do a lot of high dopamine low effort activities (eg, videogames, social media, television, recreational drugs, junk food)? If yes to both then perhaps try a dopamine “detox” to reset your receptors.

I found that I was finding it harder and harder to do things that take effort, even if they interested me (programming for work or fun, reading mom-fiction material, chores, etc) but instead spent a lot of time on HN (errr..), youtube, playing videogames, eating junk food... By abstaining from all stimulating activities, to make “low dopamine” the new normal, I could make the payoff of high effort activities worthwhile again. Concentration and motivation improved.

I often worry about this myself, and I highly agree with what some others are saying: find a problem/task that interests you or is worth solving - and work on it until it's solved, regardless of how difficult it is or inadequate it may make you feel by not understanding it at first. If you can't find a challenge, then maybe try going out of your way to add new feature /functionality to your CRUD apps. The challenges are always there if you keep an eye out.

Again,I really believe its more about preserveerance and interest, not inherent intelligence. If you can build and maintain CRUD apps without an issue, then with time and effort I am certain you could progress to other more interesting challenges given enough effort.

> find a problem/task that interests you or is worth solving - and work on it until it's solved, regardless of how difficult

I guess part of the problem is that those problems tend to be rare. The way I feel, is that if I have a problem, it's likely already been solved (in which case I'll just use that solution), or people much more intelligent than me are already working on it.

Another issue seems be be is that as time goes on, the problems I take interest in seem to become much more difficult to solve. This may be because they are technically complex, but can be for other reasons too. Often I don't even know what I need to be learning / researching to solve a problem, and that basically halts me.

You could consider talking more about what you are interested in, what makes you happy, and less about the problems with your current situation. If you have even a little bit of energy that you can put towards something which you care about more than what you're working on now, you can start to move your life in a new direction. Eventually you'll start to take some risks that you are not brave enough to take now, but you need to be positive. Don't worry about making drastic changes now, they can come when you're ready.

Complex problems are good if you care about them. A smart person working on it is a good sign. You just need to find a small way to contribute or even just to learn, you don't need to take over the world. Just do one small thing towards finding what you care about.

In short, don't worry about changing your current routine and job, try to find something you really care about and work more on that in your free time. Trust your gut.

So, by your own admission, you aren't intelligent enough to excel in your current profession. You're not interested in pivoting to adjacent fields. Your constraints are basically that you're not capable of, or interested in, any technical, or tech adjacent, fields. HN might have a hard time helping you here, since the fields you're ruling out are exactly what the site focuses on.

It sounds like you're basically at square one. Do you have another skill set? Are you particularly interested in some other field? It's difficult for a stranger to give you life advice when all we know is what you are not interested in or capable of. Tell us more about what does feel engaging for you, and we may be able to help more.

> I've tried to branch out into a number of different things, but nothing sticks. I fail to understand, fail to recognize patterns, am too slow to understand simple concepts and never retain anything.

I am doing my Masters in Statistics after doing my BS in Computer Science. It was overwhelming and like you, I felt I do not understand even the basic concepts and it takes longer to grasp the simpler concepts. But I realized I just have to spend more time on topics I do not understand and ask for help from my peers.

From my experience, in terms of learning new subject, I think what you are feeling/facing is expected and you just have to push through it.

You say you’re stubborn on what you take an interest in. Could you expand on that?

The other prompt that felt interesting to me was that you feel an intellectual limitation in terms of what you retain, what does that look like in practice?

Are there any activities that you enjoy doing for hours at a time without draining you?

You might want to use that as a starting point and then branch out.

Alternatively, it seems like you might be struggling with anxiety/impatience and you might want to work on that instead of trying to reorient your external life.

Some suggestions: try exploring mindfulness and meditation, it's pretty easy to get started with an app like HeadSpace. Also, I would highly recommend the book The Charisma Myth, it's pretty simple and has some excellent exercises to deal with a range of impairing feelings/emotions in an effective way.

I feel bad that you are experiencing this problem. If "promoters" stopped putting out ridiculous "call to code" YouTube videos etc. you and many others will probably not be having this problem.

Have you thought about jobs that involve some sort of manual labor / physical activity? Maybe you have "physical" intelligence (it's a thing) or perhaps something more aligned with creative arts? Try doing a bunch of different things. If you're not strapped for money, see if you can shadow a bunch of different careers and see which one sparks interest in you. I agree that it has to do with interest, not aptitude.

Something no-one else has mentioned yet is learning methods. Stuff might not be sticking because you're using the wrong learning method for you. Instead of reading a book, maybe watch a video tutorial instead, learn by doing etc, get a mentor to pair program with?

Also look up 'imposter syndrome', it does sound a lot like you're suffering from self-esteem issues too so maybe get someone to talk with?

Interestingly, I've never been a fan of video tutorials in the past, but have tried using them in the past weeks. There are some aspects of it I like. It's easier to keep attention with a video than a large wall of text these days (though it used to be the opposite). Unfortunately, it's not so easy to skip around content in a video, for example to avoid useless filler content or to return to a small chunk of content to review.

Hey. Kind of same here. I’m a good programmer but not motivated enough to really get to grips with the difficult and low-paying fields I’m interested in. Here’s a lazy solution: cut down your hours. Work 4 days or less. If programming’s already so boring, then there’s not much downside to picking a boring well-paid field to offset the salary loss. Use your time to do things you care about instead.

I think I see a lot of people in the potential career changes who have a similar attitude, which unfortunately continues the (probably not untrue) perception of BAs, sales and management who don't know shit. Please don't add to this by saying "I don't like development and don;t think I'm very good at it, so instead I'll become a manager of developers".

I felt a bit similar and what I had to do is actually think and even write down what kind of activities really interests me, give me energy and inspire me. It was quite an interesting mix of tech, teaching, community service, working with youth. Now I try to slowly move to that and so far I feel much better. I wish you good luck!

throwaway88p, I think you actually seem to a very mentally healthy guy, despite what the nerds over here suggest. The obsession to solve intellectual problems for the sake of solving problems with no grounding in reality ( or a made up reality) is what is glorified by these nerds here. While this obsessive trait (hard wired) does result in some extraordinary benefits for humanity, it is not mentally rewarding for someone who can see it for what it is i.e grunt work.

The ability of be bored is I think just an important useful neuro-mental process, just like the ability to forget. depending of which side you lean it may be useful or be a liability under different circumstances.

To end on a pessimistic note, one cannot manufacture interest, unless we come up with a way to skillfully manipulate our neuro hard wiring. I think we a long way off from achieving that.

I remember reading an old post on here by some anon who managed to make themselves enjoy math using a carefully crafted psychedelic trip. Could be a fluke on the level of curing OCD with a gunshot, but also an interesting possibility.

I can agree here, most psychedelics ( and to a lesser degree foods and other drugs) will have some mind altering effects. There was someone online a long time back who claimed that there is very reliable way to forget certain memories ( useful when trying to forget traumatic events) by using some combination of substances.

punchclockhero says*>"Could be a fluke on the level of curing OCD with a gunshot, but also an interesting possibility."<

No need to get so drastic: our OP should simply sign up for the military.

After several years of someone else telling him what to do in no uncertain terms, he will develop a clear direction of his own. Plus they'll train him in a skill! I suggest plumbing, b/c there are plenty of jobs and it pays well!8-))

Do you feel passionate about any particular subject, trade, or issue at all, regardless of whether or not it's connected to tech?

Reminds me of this famous scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu2HhlTEHMc

Passionate? not really much anymore. There are a number of things I'll take fleeting interest in after reading / watching some stuff, ranging from different technical subjects, to scientific subject, etc. Nothing ever seems to stick, though.

Not sure why you've phrased all these things as negatives. Whenever I'm faced with something similar I don't wonder if I'm the problem but that the existing material and advice was not meant for people like me and I should look for a way to help myself and those like me.

you say you started doing programming as a hobby which means it used to be fun, right?

you might want to isolate the aspects of what made it fun back in the days when it was a hobby and what makes it dreadful at the moment and find yourself something which include the first, but lacks the later.

personally i think the attractive side of being a developer is creating something. reading you're not interested in business side of tech (analyst, salesman, management) you might want to explore other crafts which maintain the creative part.

that could be anything really. i myself started out as a graphic designer before i got involved in programming which might be something you want to explore...

Honestly, I've always enjoyed chasing the "rabbit hole" that came with solving problems. I'm generally poor at putting my thoughts into concrete descriptions, but I'll attempt. It used to be something like this:

I have some sort of problem, ideally one that intrigues me, because it's not obvious. I would dive into it, and it would lead down to a rabbit whole of other issues and subjects I would research and would come out with a solution, having been engaged the whole time.

Nowadays, problems I encounter are either incredibly shallow, being caused because of some carelessness by myself or someone else and often solved with a 5 minute search, or the complete opposite, too complex for me to even get started with, as people much smarter than me.

Try psychotherapy. It is not going to change anything immediately, but maybe you'll start looking at your problem from a different angle and find out that the problem is not your dayjob.

I don't think theres such a thing as not smart enough to be a programmers. One of the dumbest people I knew was also one of the better programmers.

I would not consider myself very smart.

Took me multiple years, probably a decade between my first hello world and my first job, to become a programmer.

I just didn't give up

Can you remember a time when coding sparked joy in your life? What made you interested in cs? Try to go back to the inspiration.

It sounds like you're looking for growth and significance but need direction. Listen to the Ken Coleman podcast.

Can totally relate.

25 years as system administrator and I DO NOT want to do DEVops nor SRE.

Not sure where to go myself....

Learn how to do systems admin in the cloud your current employer/industry favors - as a longtime Microsoft platform admin who picked up PowerShell over the past decade to do AD/Exchange/Lync (Skype), Azure was easiest to slide into. Learn how that cloud’s networking works, especially with existing on-prem stuff, and do so in its command line interface. Learn how to do those things in Terraform and Ansible.

Be a sysadmin for developers. Help those bright young kids who are network-blind figure out why their stuff isn’t talking to other stuff. Help them when they can’t work out how to deal with the corporate web proxy or why their cloud bills are so high (did they check how many cores their database instance really needed? Did they pick a good VM size, or should they have gone with something with a higher RAM/CPU ratio?)

What about quantum physics or something like that?

Not Einstein: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/06/fish-climb/

have you tried taking a break and going on vacation and not think about tech at all?

Game design? Story telling? UX?

Drink more water.

UX design?

That is, despite all the fuzz, not something you jump into from maintaining CRUD apps.

This sounds like depression to me. You're having trouble finding activities that interest you and feeling pessimistic about the future. It's easy to get stuck thinking that everything is hopeless or you're going to feel like this forever.

Try taking some time off to decompress and talking to a psychologist. It's a slow process and it can be very challenging but with time you can start getting excited about new challenges again.

+1. Depression affects 25% adults at some point. I am not talking about ‘sadness’ but a more profound condition whose symptoms are subtle at first, but pervasive and protean. And get a CT of your brain as well.

I'm going to buck the trend here and say that if intelligence is approximately normally distributed, there will always be some proportion of the population that doesn't meet the minimum in the necessary dimensions.

The point is not to demoralize someone, but to prevent them from spending a lifetime of angst and anguish in a field that is not totally beyond their grasp but always just far enough above their head to keep them questioning themselves constantly.

OP, it sounds like you've given this a shot and it didn't quite stick. Maybe it's time to try something else. For what it's worth, I felt the same for much of my education, studying physics and passing curved tests but never really feeling like I understood mathematics - and it's a terrible feeling to be somewhere where everyone presumes that anyone is capable of anything while you're here struggling.

I did manage to complete my degree but I ended up specializing in something where I could leverage the mathematical intuition I developed without having to fake my way through actual math, and I'm fairly successful. Perhaps you can do something similar.

The way the entire thread bends over backwards to find something "wrong" with OP, some external, fixable explanation, is counterproductive. These sorts of expectations are good to have but if they are not grounded in the reality of individual ability, they can lead to serious mental health problems.

I feel you buddy. Programming can be painful if not born to it. Find some other means of telling your story; blog, animation, graphic novel, public speaking, or spray paint on the subway walls.

Welcome to adulthood. Work is often unpleasant.

You don't need more school, you need to find a healthier attitude, and maybe coworkers you get along better with.