The spark that started it all#

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been passionate about computers. Not the LinkedIn-bio kind of passion, no — the real kind. The kind that keeps you awake until 3 AM because you’re this close to figuring it out. The kind that jolts you awake in the middle of the night with a sudden “aha!” moment.

When I started my career, most developers shared this same fire. We were a tribe of enthusiasts, united by curiosity and the thrill of making machines do our bidding.

Fortunately, my profession democratized#

Computer science programs multiplied, and waves of new engineers joined our ranks. More people to share the passion with. More colleagues to discuss last night’s discoveries or weekend experiments. More minds to challenge ideas, debate approaches, and push each other forward.

The ecosystem exploded. New technologies emerged constantly. Open source projects proliferated. Books, magazines, and expert articles became abundant. Where we had once been limited by access to knowledge, we were now limited only by time — a far more pleasant constraint. It was an age of abundance, and everything was accelerating.

Unfortunately, my profession democratized#

As salaries soared, they attracted a different crowd — people drawn not by curiosity but by compensation. Developers who hopped from company to company chasing incremental raises, never staying long enough to truly learn or leave their mark. People who prioritized speed over craft, when they prioritized the work at all.

I want to be clear: there’s nothing inherently wrong with treating software development as work. Not everyone needs to spend their weekends tinkering with side projects. But for those of us who lived and breathed code, something important was lost. We could no longer casually chat about personal projects with colleagues, because most colleagues didn’t have any.

Then came social media, which gave a megaphone to noise. Audience began to replace competence as the measure of a developer. The race to fill GitHub profiles with forks and hollow projects intensified — until it became so meaningless that developers now proudly display barren profiles, having given up the pretense entirely.

Scattered embers#

Of course, passionate developers still exist. Some are visible — quietly maintaining the open source projects we all depend on. But most aren’t. They’re solving problems no one will hear about, tinkering on projects they’ll never share. They’re out there. Just harder to find.

We’re now hopelessly diluted in an ocean of professionals who simply clock in and clock out. Finding one in a typical company has become rare. The irony is striking: as the number of developers multiplied by orders of magnitude, those of us who care deeply about the craft found ourselves more isolated than ever. Fewer kindred spirits, not more.

The casual conversations about weekend “exploits”, the excitement of showing a colleague something cool you’d built — those moments have largely vanished. Software development has become a job.

Software development has become a job like any other.

Making peace with it#

I’ve come to accept this reality, though not without some resignation. Every now and then, I cross paths with a passionate developer — someone whose eyes light up when discussing an elegant solution or an interesting problem. These encounters are brief, but they remind me that the spark hasn’t been entirely extinguished.

And I still have old friends who feel the same way, who understand without explanation. We keep sharing discoveries, debating ideas, and reminding each other why we fell in love with this craft in the first place. Perhaps that’s enough. Perhaps the tribe has simply become smaller and more scattered, but it endures.

Coding may have lost some of its soul along the way. But for those of us who still feel the pull, we find each other eventually. We always do.