I went back to coding stupid small games in a scheme-like Lisp on 8 and 16 bit cause.
I started out with Lisp in the 70s but followed the money to C, C++, Java and DotNet with side-trips into Smalltalk and Self. And a metric tonne of x86 16 bit assembly.
But I always had a fondness for Lisp and FORTH.
One thing I remember from the old days was (as Sussman pointed out) we used to build larger programs by composing smaller programs. Now we use monolithic blobs where you spend a lot of time writing tests to see how the API works because there's very little documentation (and it's a black box where a LOT of functionality is hidden behind a single API instead of smaller components you combine how you see fit. Look at any Microsoft Crypto API for an example.)
So my fun is now had on personal projects.
I have moved some professional projects over to Erlang and Elixr. Others use closure, and I get a similar feel. I feel like I'm in control. JavaScript used to give me that feeling, but my management chain insists we do things like import packages to test whether an object is null (and it turns out it does the comparison wrong.)
Your sense of "fun" will no doubt be different, but I guess my point is... the freedom to choose your development environment can provide a bit of happiness to your life. Not just what you work on.
I went back to coding stupid small games in a scheme-like Lisp on 8 and 16 bit cause.
I started out with Lisp in the 70s but followed the money to C, C++, Java and DotNet with side-trips into Smalltalk and Self. And a metric tonne of x86 16 bit assembly.
But I always had a fondness for Lisp and FORTH.
One thing I remember from the old days was (as Sussman pointed out) we used to build larger programs by composing smaller programs. Now we use monolithic blobs where you spend a lot of time writing tests to see how the API works because there's very little documentation (and it's a black box where a LOT of functionality is hidden behind a single API instead of smaller components you combine how you see fit. Look at any Microsoft Crypto API for an example.)
So my fun is now had on personal projects.
I have moved some professional projects over to Erlang and Elixr. Others use closure, and I get a similar feel. I feel like I'm in control. JavaScript used to give me that feeling, but my management chain insists we do things like import packages to test whether an object is null (and it turns out it does the comparison wrong.)
Your sense of "fun" will no doubt be different, but I guess my point is... the freedom to choose your development environment can provide a bit of happiness to your life. Not just what you work on.