No, it's not always interesting.

Debugging distracting issues, like your middleware stack, is uninteresting. Rolling through your code base to implement localization is uninteresting. Implementing 50 maintenance screens for DB tables and testing them is uninteresting. It's just work.

You already know what to do, now it just needs to be done.

Maybe you'll think up some clever editor macros to make it easier. Maybe you'll try and dig up some tool to automate it. THAT might be interesting, for a minute. But inevitably, it's just work.

If you've looked around, there are always these "scut" jobs in IT shops that get dumped on the new, young coders. I can guarantee you that if that work "was interesting", it wouldn't be dumped on them. It may be interesting to YOU, fresh on the job, bright eyed to the world. But to ME, who's been doing this a while, no, it's not interesting.

I already know how to do those things. There's no real "learning" involved, no discovery.

Typing rote code in to an editor, fixing typos, running build and deploy cycles...whee! Boy howdy, yea, that's a hoot.

For many, programming is a chore. They do it to reach some other goal. Perhaps they're an engineer writing some simple simulations, or a sociologist doing some studies. For them, programming is something that's in the way of what they really want -- the results, the conclusions of the study, whatever.

So, anyway.

"No."

I've been programming for around 30 years and I can tell you that whilst programming remains interesting on the whole if I keep up with technologies, it can certainly become very uninteresting.

There is a spiral that can develop when writing code. For some developers I have worked with, they are well down this spiral. Stuck on a particular technology and not getting anything really stimulating to accomplish. Maybe they're content in that position - "programming is just my job", but I doubt if it could really be called "interesting".

I have encountered some jobs that simply don't interest me and I find it incredibly difficult motivating myself to get a single line written. So I'm always on the quest to keep creative, interesting work coming my way.

One of the most useful approaches to keeping my programming work interesting is to present new ideas to stake holders. I take some time, even from my own person time, to seek out new technologies and look for ways to apply them to my work. Then I look to present my ideas to the right people. I love to present, so that helps a lot.

So my advise for a programming career is - keep your creative side alive and kicking. Get your ideas out there, and be brave when exploring new territories.

It depends on your personality. If you love being a detective ( debugging ) and tinkering ( finding creative solutions to design problems ) then yes, it will always stay interesting as long as your spirit isn't crushed by some Dilbert style manager.

Programming has the benefit of being very rewarding! Sometimes one is faced with rather complex problems, this can either lead to to some heavy duty mind exercise to solve, or sometimes things can be solved with a rather elegant, simple solutions. Either way finding or figuring out these solutions are always VERY rewarding. I think the satisfaction one gets solving these problems on a daily basis is what keeps a programmer going.

Being a programmer means you are constantly learning; new techniques, new technologies and new ways of using both these techniqies and technologies. a programmer is never bored! The more you learn the more you can apply things to get things done in better ways. The feeling you get when you fist figure things out is the same feeling you get again and again..this is what keeps it interesting.

There are always going to be aspects of it that you like and aspects that you don't like. You'll find that with experience, you'll learn to recognise these things. =) I think this is a very good question.

It's what you make of it. You will probably do a lot of boring, tedious work but there are always interesting challenges in programming. You will never have that same magical feeling as the first time you programmed but it can still be very fun and engaging. Of course, I don't do it as a JOB, so it could get worse doing it full time (I sure hope not D:). But I've been programming for a long time and I plan on doing it for a long time still.

The classic answer: "it depends"

What area of programming are you interested in? What area do you actually get to do (it terms of work)? If they don't match up, even if it might be interesting to other people, it won't be interesting to you.

Actually, programming when done "correctly" (as I've read several places) is basically translating carefully planned specifications into machine language. There shouldn't be much room for creative interpretation, because that leads to unwanted behavior.

Hobbyist programming, on the other hand, can be very enjoyable. It can be extremely frustrating, especially when tracking down bugs, but when you find that bug and squash it, that "programmer's high" is what keeps many of us going.

If you go with the technology constantly learning it indeed is. If you get stuck however on a long and boring project or with the same technology it can get pretty boring as I've seen.

Not all programming jobs will be particularly interesting to you. Often, if you want to be more than a lower level programmer and get into the design decisions, you have to know the business side of what you're programming for - so it will depend a good deal on how interesting you find that business part of a project.

My first job in the computer industry was in an insurance software house. As "just a coder," I was at the mercy of Insurance-side users calling the shots. If they didn't nail down their specs to start with, it was I who was going to have to pull an all-nighter to still meet whatever deadline when specs changed at the last minute. Once I realized that I was going to need to know way more about reinsurance treaties, etc. than I had any interest in if I wanted to keep my sanity there, let alone progress, I decided to leave. Never regretted that move.

I think the level of interest depends on what we code and our personal interest. Programming complex algorithms including lots of mathematics may be extremely interesting to someone fond of mathematics, and uninteresting to someone who rather loves to see nice GUI into action and vice versa. Also perhaps, if we are developing some product which is completely our own idea and our own creation, then its much more interesting to code than coding for someone else like for a company as a job for living.

I think this speaks pretty much for itself:

( link ^[1])

(this just for the fun, I think that the two "long" answers pretty much sum up what I think about this topic :) )

It depends if you have got an interesting job or you just alter today 125th form's caption, and spent last few months altering captions or button texts all day...

You might not be programming for your entire career. You might get involved with Architecture Design, Database Design, etc.

Yes.

No.

Yes, it can get boring when delivering changes to an established and reliable system, on time, dictates that you need to focus on completion and not improvement. There is always room for improvement in the developers mind, but the users are more interested in continuity and familiarty.

That said, the thrill of going live with code that was ever boring to write normally makes up for that, in my view.

It becomes even more interesting, to use technologies you never dreamed of, several years ago.

I've been developing since 1997 professionally, and probably since 1983-ish for fun.

Half the time I still can't believe I get paid for something I love to do.

So to answer your question, Yes! It definitely can still be interesting. And if, for any reason, you find it isn't interesting. Make something change!

It can be a great career, where you're always learning new things, being creative, troubleshooting, learning new business domains. But mostly it'll be what you make of it.

The writing code part of being a programmer is and for me always will be interesting. However, our role is far more than just writing code all day and sometimes it's the other stuff that I grow tired of.

Typing this answer to avoid having to do some really painful PHP work. So no, it's not always interesting or fun. Just a week ago when I thought I had all the PHP junk done and got back into some Java I was the happiest I've been in a long time at work. Now I'm sad again.

Maybe.