Comment by piva00

Same, same. It was my main hobby since I discovered a little terminal in my dad's 80s videogame that could run BASIC, used my rudimentary 9 years old reading skills to look hard enough to the manual and figure out something about that puzzling black screen.

Discovered I could make it do stuff.

I could make stuff, just by typing some white characters in the black screen.

Fell in love, was my main indoors hobby, bought books, learned enough C/C++ to try to mod games before I was 14.

The web started to be a thing. I asked for HTML books for Christmas. Then learnt about ASP, it had something to do with Visual BASIC, I knew BASIC.

Learnt the web, got a job, worked my ass off. 12 hours day and loving it, I was 18, and lucky. My hobby was my job.

20+ years later, it's a job, programming is a skill I have and I'm extremely grateful for being so lucky that it also made me a career, allowed me to live in other countries, and ultimately settle down in a very different place than what used to be my home.

But still, it's a job now, not my hobby. After working in many different places, seeing the transformation of this industry, me getting older, it's just all a bit jading, I don't aspire to do this for more than a job these days, the only figment left of the old hobby is the odd electronics project for artists.

I have other hobbies that fulfill me in a very different way, I think it's just life :)