“Curious about the addictiveness of coding? Struggling to develop the addiction like some developers claim? Let’s chat about it! When and how did you start feeling the addiction to coding? Share your experience!”
#CodingAddiction #ProgrammingJourney #DeveloperLife #JavaScript #TechCommunity
When you start creating projects that you actually want to make and use, and you fail and fail and fail again but you still want to go on solving the problems because you want to actually finish the project. You learn many things you don’t know along the way and you will feel fulfilled doing so. It’s like the feeling when you finally beat up a difficult boss in video games. That’s when you may start feeling the addiction. That’s just me though.
There isn’t a secret sauce that makes coding specifically addicting, it’s the same thing that makes anything addictive – being good at it. You become very emotionally invested in the stuff you do really well, especially the more validation you get from it. Same as any sport, hobby, whatever.
Don’t wait for the addiction or the adrenaline right now. Make something and it will come to u by itself. Start a project. Make something cool. Show it off to ppl and post it here on this sub. Then the excitement will kick in. Happy leaning. Happy coding😄
Not everyone who programs is addicted to it. Think about any other job. Some people just do their jobs and they’re good at it. I doubt most programmers ever get to that stage. Don’t worry if it never happens.
I’ll give you an example.
I decided this week that it was time to add another project to my portfolio. I’m looking for a job and I like coding, so it’s win-win. The idea is making a site for bands that will sell merchandise like t-shirts and albums. Simple enough. No users, but it’ll have an admin dashboard so the owner can update the products.
I came up with 7 tables in my database to accomplish this and made an ERD.
I picked a stack with things I know and things I don’t know, on purpose:
(apologies if this all sounds very advanced)
Next.js (React), Typescript, MySQL, Sequelize (as an ORM), DaisyUI (components made with TailwindCSS) and Jest (unit testing).
I know that other techs/methods/etc are recommended, but I want to throw myself in the deep end.
It took me 2 days to properly plan and connect my db to my app and send data to the UI. I had to read the docs of like 5 things to do that first.
But holy crap, once I got things working? What a rush. I wanted more.
All of this to say that once you build a project, like really *your own* stuff – just you and the documentation, trying to cobble together a simple idea, the brain chemicals that hit upon success is WOW.
Addiction can set in after that.
You’ll smash into frustrating walls all the time, but when you succeed, the feeling is the opposite of wall-smash. Sometimes I run around my apartment smiling once I’ve solved a tricky issue. It’s exhilarating. You’ll want more of it.
Start building!!
Make a nice-looking 5-page static business site, a “to do” app or a Tic Tac Toe game in JS! It doesn’t have to be a full stack project or anything to get yourself “addicted”. You’ll get there.
I think it just depends on the brain.
Gratification of making and seeing your code work as intended.
I’ve been a professional dev for 10 years and I’ve literally never felt addicted to programming. If my dentist told me he was addicted to cleaning teeth I would feel a little worried.
when I picked up coding again after 10 years. never even wrote a method when I first tried way back then. upon picking it back up, I can actually make things happen. that, and being able to basically instantly see the results of what I did, and how I can change the outcome, made me realize I love it.
I get dopamine from solving problems, so getting something I want to build to work gives me more satisfaction than playing video games these days.
Idk but i’ve been throwing on a nicotine patch every time I open Udemy in the hopes of catching the addiction /j
I honestly can’t say I’ve ever felt an addiction of any kind to coding. Satisfaction, sure, but not addiction
I like it because it’s satisfying the same way that playing chess is – there’s such a high ceiling on what there is to learn. Constantly improving, facing challenges, and then overcoming them, is just a satisfying thing.
That, sometimes, won’t come from exercises. Projects are where that mostly arises, in my experience. Being able to make something, and look at it and say to yourself, “Wow, I made this. I spent time, effort, skill, and knowledge to create this.”
Honestly it’s like being extremely good at tennis (or any sport). Once you reach a certain level of time and familiarity it becomes very easy and comfortable to start up a new project or continue one you’ve been building. It’s like how when you start playing a video game (think something difficult like Valorant or whatever) it’s super hard but once you get used to it you can play for fun in a relaxing way or super competitive where you try hard
> money
– Mr Krabs
Imo it is when you start making cool things that matter to you. Maybe it’s a flashy website, maybe its some cool embedded project on a Pi, maybe it’s simple scripts that draw fun patterns, whatever you’re into.
Ironically, once it becomes a career, those effects begin to diminish, at least in my experience. But, then the money and lifestyle it affords will keep you going. 🙂
For me it comes and goes. Some days I can sit days and nights at the computer, some days I hate all technology and just want to ride my bike or drink beer with friends. So it really depends on at what of those days you approach me lol
I only get addicted when I’m working on something I’m passionate about
Huh? I’ve never heard of anyone saying that they’re addicted to coding. It also seems like a strange concept. An addiction is usually formed with shallow activities that provide immediate gratification – Like video games, social media, sugar, cigarettes, etc
Coding does not provide immediate gratification like that…..at least to me. I will say that coding is relaxing….not addictive. Just like how painting a nice landscape on a Saturday afternoon is relaxing.
I think when most people spend hours coding a project, they are more interested in finishing the project and seeing it come to life. And they know that the more time they spend on it, they quicker it will happen.
Well legend has it that Linus Torvalds breaks into your room when you’re sleeping and he knows you’re planning to make a commit to one of *his* repositories.
He then applies a nicotine patch to your arm.
Just creates the same high that I get when I build other things. If you aren’t already interested in building things then you may just never get that.
There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s how I see it.
What exercises did you try when getting started?
Adderall
Achievement→good brain chemicals→ego inflation. It’s why I’m the amazingest person in the world.
In my case, the addiction is to solve problems. So I can spend several hours just designing and trying different things. It is not about coding, coding is just a tool.
For me it is like fighting a hard boss in Dark Souls, some people love the challenge, others hate it and quit.
Gotta find a project you have passion for.
When I’m coding, I feel like I’m playing the piano and fighting a video game boss at the same time. It feels so good to create projects that I am passionate about and it’s so satisfying whenever I find an error in my coding and I fix it and then it works exactly as planned.
Making money from it
Coding puts me in a flow state. When I’m programming and on a roll, everything outside of the code vanishes and all my worries go away. That’s what’s “addicting” to me. It’s like an escape – a very technical and creative escape.
The same way you get addicted to anything else: activating the dopamine receptors in your brain.
When you actually solve a problem you’ve been stuck on, and you get the dopamine hit that comes with it. And then you do it again and again. And then you don’t want to stop.
“Until now I trained only with exercises, not even a single project.”
Get on the projects now. Until you do you’re wasting your time learning.
thats probably a good thing, high highs lead to low lows, imo its better to kindof like programming, like sitting down with a cup of coffee and programming type of enjoyment, not a beating your head against the wall and then celebrating kindof enjoyment. i think its fine to strive for a more consistent “i kindof like doing this”.
Im currently learning Haskell as found it interesting and then I quit because I didn’t understand anyyhing but then I remembered how I really wanted to learn it and solve problems with it and I remember watching people code in Haskell and I dont know it looked so cool and interesting, so i forced myself to try again.
And for me that is the addicting part learning something I know I don’t understand yet ,(i like it more if its harder to wrap my mind around like haskell)
“I hate programming. I hate programming. I hate programming. I hate programming. I hate programming. I hate programming. I hate progra- oh it works! I love programming!”
And repeat.
I’ve just stared about a few weeks ago with Kotlin (I wanna see if I can make an android app)
For me, I’m a math brained kind of guy. I’ve played around with excel a lot and there something addicting about creating systems that can an automate large amount of complex tasks with simple inputs. The productivity of it is satisfying. Some video games are like that. Games like satisfactory and factorio.
Programming seems like an extension of that. To create something that interweaves variables and processes to create a masterpiece is satisfying.
Well I always liked figuring stuff out. And cs was that with more complexity so it was always fun even if frustrating
The ability to create someting people will enjoy and/or find useful, by just hitting plastic squares in front of me. That’s pretty cool.
You can build something from nothing.
and of course being able to earn money doing so is great
Come up with a project, add an to-do list and just do things on it over a period of time whenever you want to, dont start a new project until its done but keep that idea in a seperate folder to not look at until project is done.
After awhile you will have some hundred lines of code and you will get the feeling of achivement and want to keep going and you also keep on coming up with things to do so you keep being intrested in the project, dont force yourself to an idea, either you get ideas while you making it or you dont.
In my freshman CS courses I bashed my head against projects that weren’t explicitly laid out on what we needed to do for weeks. Almost failed a few courses. Was in office hours constantly and still just felt like I didn’t get it. Then seemingly overnight one night it clicked, I became a straight A student, and could sit down at 9 am, start coding, then blink and wonder why it was dark out.
It’s the slow trickle of dopamine as you get your wins over the course of the project.
Hint: it only works if you can manage to pace yourself and plan your feature development accordingly. Otherwise you get stuck between long stretches of grind and you get burnt out.
When you start you hate yourself, and when you end, you still hate yourself but you feel smarter.
When you get to the point that you can have an idea and implement it in an hour or so. Watching it working on the screen is just an awesome feeling.
Not saying it is 100% working in one hour, but 80% working with 100% of the visuals is quite satisfying. Going back in and adding accessibility, usability, standards, linting, code smells, unit testing, responsive design, and comments and all that are just chores at that point.
Once you start building actual projects and seeing the core of what you learn be utilized, it becomes pretty satisfying to see that the effort was worthwhile and from there it’s a domino effect, at least it was for me.