I feel you. My hobby is electronics. I will be designing some circuits with an old Arduino that I have…

Machining always needs more bodies. Take that programming experience, translate it to g code and whatever software the shop is running for parts, and make that bank.

Honestly I doubt you’ll hit a salary anything like IT but its rewarding work. I LOVE manual machining. Problem solving and working out complicated parts and features is a fun challenge from day to day.

Where once was a vast and lush landscape of innovation and ingenuity, now is only a desert of grift and profiteering. The optimistic nature of our youthful tech enthusiasm has transformed into a cynical and substanceless husk, aged too fast by the years of consistent disappointments.

But if anyone at work asks, then yeah, sure, I’m really excited about the next iPhone or AI generated email signatures or whatever.

I feel your pain. I started IT in '94. Saw the excitement (AMD breaking the 1GHz barrier, High-speed internet, to name a few), then saw it go downhill just as fast.

Your feelings are valid. The “rise” of “AI” has been a net negative for my subjective experience, too.

On my good days, I still enjoy programming, but I just ignore AI, and if it is too forcefully suggested, I just blacklist the purveyor.

On my bad days, I don’t have enthusiasm for anything, but I still program because this project isn’t going to get done any other way. I’ve tried throwing AI at other things, and it screws things up so badly it takes me more time to fix it. And, sometimes it “lies” and I don’t catch it immediately.

I have a good selection of subscriptions on YT (and Nebula), communities on Lemmy, and Follows on Mastodon, and I start there when I just want to enjoy the web. I intentionally avoid following algorithmic suggestions of unknown quality (and defintiely turn off any sort of auto-play); I find I will spend time on that stuff nearly without bound, but it’s less enjoyable than what I (or other humans) have curated.

I started programming in '85 as a child. I used to be a professional Haskell programmer. I’m open for work. (All I need is vim and some API docs and I can write anything from C to JavaScript to Lean.)

I started a tiny bit before you, but close enough that we’d probably be considered the same cohort so to speak. My enthusiasm has largely waned, for sure.

For me AI and general fads don’t play a big part in how I feel.

Don’t crucify me, but for me it’s a vocal (and seemingly large) part of the tech community itself that I’m burned out on. As a professional in tech, it’s literally soul crushing to sit in front of a computer screen all day long. Yes, that’s oversimplification, but being stuck indoors, mostly sitting in front of monitors or sitting in meetings, just has destroyed my mental health. But, it’s the sterile corporate mind games and managers and project managers and crabs in a bucket mentality amongst developers that really act like a wooden stake to the heart.

Even after all that, I still had/have some tech related hobbies, and those same personalities are so off putting that I had to set them aside. Granted, the whole sitting in front of a screen in my “off hours” when I could be up, out and about, doing things is also a huge factor.

Won’t get into the job aspect of things too much, but as an example from my hobbies: I’m so tired of people who feel compelled to yuck others’ yum. I’m using the wrong version of Linux. Why would anybody ever choose X library when Y exists? Oh, you did something with AI, why do you hate humanity?

So, basically I’m tired of “you people” (not all of you, some of you, maybe even most of you are a blessing) in addition to the soul crushing aspect of being in front of a screen all day is what’s killed my enthusiasm.

Hey me too!

I’m having way more fun buying up all the tech of the 2000s and relearning it all. Its just more interesting to me

For stuff not techy, climbing is very fun and affordable and a good way to meet people.

Let me give an example that matches my own discouragement and might also explain yours.

In the middle of last century, the woodworking industry that created fine furniture started experiencing a shift. Due to the sudden explosion of wages and wealth and population in the late 40s to 70s, products had to be made faster and cheaper.

One method was to lower the quality of inputs. Plywood instead of hardwood. Then fiberboard/chipboard instead of plywood.

We see the same system in play now, with AI automation and it’s gratuitous hallucinations. It is essentially garbage materials in order to save time and money.

But another method was also in automating the work. Whereas before craftsmen used hand planes and chisels, newer craftsmen used electric shapers and planers. And later, CNC machines stepped in to produce delicate and complicated designs in a fraction of the time - and frequently even more precisely and more cleanly - than anyone with a carving chisel could do.

And that is the part which is NOT being effectively duplicated in IT.

Sure, AI can automate the work, but instead of maintaining quality, said quality of work is also taking a nosedive in tandem with the quality of materials.

And that is what is discouraging me six ways to Sunday. It’s garbage on both sides of the coin, and not just one. There is no part of the equation in which I can still take pride in. It’s all depressive, disgusting slop that I would be ashamed to put my name to.

My first experiences with computers started when I was in Junior High around '79. It was a total nerd hobby, almost "underground ". Now I see it for what it is. Gadgets become necessities and we become enslaved to them. We have to stop chasing our tails

Its not fucking fun to be on the computer anymore. They changed it and now it sucks. It used to be so cool

• Conner O’Malley

I was where you were a few months ago. It’s an awful feeling and I’ve been obsessed with computers for 28 years. This has been exceptionally difficult for me. I had a really rough year end where I was working on recurring critical defects for weeks. I caused most of them (proximate cause) but the state of the industry itself is what placed me in an impossible position where I was having to make things of poor quality that nobody likes.

Technology itself is not the problem. There is nothing inherently wrong with AI. The way it has presented itself to the world is because of greed and a feeding frenzy. The way it is and works now makes it a bad tool. A tool that does a good job 80% of the time is garbage. It’s being shoved at us with little regard for us and the consequences.

But I am hopeful. I am using AI for my personal projects. It’s not really a choice for me. For many years I’ve tried to get people to work with me on something; anything really. But it either didn’t happen or fizzled out very quickly. These are ideas that I couldn’t execute on my own, and now I can.

So there is a way to find opportunity in chaos. And this is the phase we are in.

I can also see positive things coming out of this. I’ve seen quite a few total newbies who switched to Linux who said they would have been stuck without AI and given up.

The failure of this massive experiment will become the basis for new innovation. We should be perplexed at where we are now, considering how windows forms apps were easier to build 15 years ago than a basic web app is now. We accumulated a lot of complexity without our productivity increasing, instead we are in desperation trying to throw money and “compute” at the complexity.

AI kind of feels like asbestos to me. Too useful to ignore and too harmful to embrace. But I really think that from some unexpected corners we might see a new era for technology emerging. I am optimistic.

Building a model railway in a suitcase is one of the most random and “out-there” things I’ve recently heard of someone setting out to do. This is fucking awesome. Props to you. How the hell did you come up with that idea?

I’ve been in IT since 2008, and got into building guns as a means to distract myself from working in tech, which I now abhor. Maybe trains would put my head in a better place.

I picked up archery and woodwork this year as a way to get away from my computer. Highly recommend finding a couple of hobies that you can switch between when that urge to get back to the screen kicks in.

At this point tech is a hostile malevolent force.

Same. :/

I try to be as low tech as possible now. Most tech these days feels like it’s trying to exploit me in every way it can.