coding burn out?

[metulburr]

I am wondering from those that program 10+ years about burning out on coding?

After about 10 years of being glued to the computer i find myself wanting to get away from it more and more. I would rather go biking/walking than program a game at this point. That is something i would of never said 10 years ago. Im not sure if its just a current mood (has been for a couple years) or just deciding on switching stuff up permanently. 10 years ago i was looking at getting my CS degree, now i am not sure i want to do that. I dont think i even want to do any job related to computers now. I want to be outside, not stuck in an office. The only time i spend on a computer now is checking facebook and this forum...mainly out of habit. For those that have many years under your belt, have you gone through something like this? Is this normal?

[ichabod801]

Not me, man. I've been programming since 1980, when I was 10. A lot of that time it was pretty sporadic, but there was some serious binge coding going on here and there. The last 20 years or more I have been programming hard core, from poker simulations in Java to learning R and SAS, to teaching kids Python, to revamping my whole division at work, to generating objective performance reviews, to t_games. I took a break after t_games, and starting working on other projects. I found myself still wanting to program, so I'm working on another t_games release and learning Rust.

But then again, I'm not typically considered normal.

It reminds me of a question I used to see on Chess sites a lot: How should I play Chess? Should I play five minute games, one hour games, three day games? My answer was always to play whichever way you have fun playing. If programming is not your job, the goal is to have fun. If you're not having fun, go do something else.

[snippsat]

I think is normal for most to struggle with motivation or can get burnout if doing stuff that you are passionate about a lot over a long period.
I have felt lack of motivation/burnout not only with programming but other stuff that i have been doing a lot,
it's that damn balance that can be hard to find sometime.

The Reality of Developer Burnout

Burnout is sneaky. It doesn’t usually announce itself.
It slowly grinds at you until these feelings become the new normal, and at that point it’s not easy to dig yourself out of the hole.
— Zach Holman

You suddenly realize that you've been eating ice cream for three meals every day for years on end.
You're tired of it; you don't want to see ice cream any more.
People who eat ice cream occasionally won't understand this; how could you possibly want less ice cream?!
— Gary Bernhardt

[Larz60+]

After programming for 25 years in the corporate world, I got burnt out more than anything from working 6 days a week for 10 to 14 hours a day almost the entire time. I took a two year sabbatical, but didn't really stop programming during this time, rather working on stuff I wanted to work on, like a Stabilized Instrumentation Platform Controller for a Stratospheric Balloon, and other fun stuff.

Then went back to corporate world, and remained until 2004, consultant from then on.