falling out of love with coding
I've been feeling rather listless about coding recently. I briefly tried some things on a sideproject website of mine to get back into it, and it was like pulling teeth. I haven't properly coded in months, so I am sure that adds to it, but there's more to it.
I thought about it, and something else came to my mind. Years ago, I was teaching myself 3D modeling. For a few years, I had planned to get into game design as a prop artist and also applied to a university program centered on this. It needed a portfolio, so for three years I worked hard and got rejected each year because 600 people applied for 40 spots, haha. But what I specifically remembered is how I fell out of love with that too for a very similar feeling. I was making a dumpster in 3DS Max and I ran into the same bug over and over again. I had issues with flipped normals and for some reason, they wouldn't unflip. I even recreated the whole dumpster from scratch after I couldn't solve it, and after a while I saw the same bug again. After that, I was done. That whole thing was the last drop and made me realize I was tired of not being - or at least feeling - in control of my tools. There were so many layers between me and my craft and I was tired of being helplessly reliant on things that I couldn't fix. With some other hobbies of mine, there was just me and the tool directly creating the craft - me, the needle holding the embroidery floss and the fabric; me, the pen and the paper. In each of them, I can reasonably repair or replace the tool. Thankfully, the paper will not suddenly glitch into the table and the needle will not suddenly refuse to pierce the fabric.
But with digital creation, there is so much between me and the project - I need working hardware and peripherals, I need a working OS, I rely on software created and maintained by other people to create something within. I can reasonably troubleshoot and repair hardware and peripherals and some aspect of the OS, but I am out of luck with most software, even if it is open source. I am simply not knowledgeable enough on programming languages to submit a fix for any open source software I use, and back then, I was using proprietary software.
And at that moment, I was just so tired of that. My ability to create is in the hands of others and affected by so many different factors that are possible points of failure, introducing uncertainty. I craved simplicity and predictability, I wanted as much control over my creation process as possible, and 3D modeling was not going to give me that. It also lacked any tactile input; I would never hold my creation unless I 3D printed it for some reason, and creating it involved the same movements as completely different activities like social media or gaming. I dropped it.
Coding reminds me of that feeling today. The issues are similar with the hardware, peripherals, OS and software (IDE) or at least a browser editor. No tactile experience to it. But it goes a bit further - now it isn't just about my experience, but how others experience the creation.
I hate how unpredictable the end result becomes. I have to create with having several different screen resolutions in mind, a ton of different devices, and different browsers. Each has its own quirks, and bugs, and other implementation weirdness. It really dampens my enthusiasm to work on things, because I cannot focus on creative freedom and fun (which as a hobbyist, I feel like is a fair goal to have; my websites are not services after all, and more alike deeply unserious art), I instead focus on what works in Firefox that doesn't work in Safari which again shows up differently in Chrome. I have no control over each of the browsers and how they implement HTML or CSS, and I have no control over the devices and browsers people use. It's annoying to create something you're proud of and it looks like shit elsewhere, especially when it's stuff that has no solution you can immediately easily implement or doesn't involve throwing someone else's work at it (making yourself reliant on that again) or limiting yourself.
People a lot more knowledgeable than me have written extensively (just one example!) about how bloated modern websites are, how frameworks and libraries are thrown at everything, and how we're in a culture of fixing something with a fix that needs another fix. This doesn't even touch on the specific JavaScript discourse in the small web, or how people will intentionally use extremely niche browsers or neuter it to death with NoScript and other things and then get mad at you if your website doesn't display right.
I think I am not the only one with this coding fatigue or at least frustration, if the amount of "best viewed on !browser in !resolution" disclaimers on personal sites is taken into account. The more minimalist or the closer to the common three column layout your website is, the easier you will have it to make it work for the majority at least, but where is the fun in that? It's much more fun to create and discover websites like Alien Shit Head Kid or Corru.Observer. I don't wanna think of all the constraints and points of failure all the time, but with website making, this aspect is overwhelming to me right now. I hate when the craft feels unreliable or unpredictable.
I think I'll pass on coding for a while until I feel inspired to fight and persevere through all the ridiculousness again >:)