Itamar Turner-Trauring codewithoutrules.com

Enthusiasts vs. Pragmatists  ↦

Do you love programming for its own sake, or do you just program for the outcomes it enables? Depending on which describes you best you will face different problems in your career as a software developer.

Enthusiasts code out of love. If you’re an enthusiast you’d write software just for fun, but one day you discovered your hobby could also be your career, and now you get paid to do what you love.

Pragmatists may enjoy coding, but they do it for the outcomes. If you’re a pragmatist, you write software because it’s a good career, or for what it enables you to do and build.

Which is your camp and why?


Discussion

Sign in or Join to comment or subscribe

Jerod Santo

Jerod Santo

Omaha, Nebraska

Jerod co-hosts The Changelog, crashes JS Party, and takes out the trash (his old code) once in awhile.

2018-11-13T18:27:58Z ago

Do we have to pick just one? I live (and code) on a spectrum. Sometimes I code for the fun of it. Other times I code because it enables me to build things I want to exist. Other times, it’s just a job.

It’s pretty amazing how versatile this craft is. People can come to it for so many different reasons and get so many different outcomes from it. What else is like this? 🤔

Player art
  0:00 / 0:00