Does anyone else not find the fun in programming...?

[Michael Chermside]

Chris Lyon writes:
> I find python very effective as a language and can generally project
> most of my hazy thoughts into it. But FUN !!! This is work dammit,
> I have now ground my teeth down from the number of times I read that
> programming is fun. Football (association) is fun, walking along
> canals is fun, Arguing about quite how useless the British Government
> is fun but programming  ?
> 
> Do I need help ?

Well, I can only speak for myself, but *I* _DO_ find programming fun.
When I was in college, I used to practically disapear every once in
a while for nearly a week at a time while working furiously on a 
program. These days, when I get a free weekend (which is somewhere
between hardly ever and never), I will sometimes spend it writing a
program for something like a game I was inspired to create. The fact
that in my day job they pay me to do programming is just, well, great!
Of course, I don't enjoy every moment. Right now I really need to
spend the rest of the day writing up release notes and deployment
plans for the latest version of our software, and that's not my
favorite part of the job. But I couldn't take the same kind of pride
in my work if I didn't see to it that even our release notes are of
the same high quality as our code.

Perhaps I'm just VERY fortunate... but then before I worked as a
programmer, I used to be a teacher, and I ALSO enjoyed doing that
job. My recomendation is to try to find a job which you really
enjoy doing. After all, why waste such a large portion of your life
on something that isn't rewarding? Sure, you still need to eat, but
(at least in the USA where I live) it doesn't take NEARLY as much
money to live on as most people seem to think, and there are many
different ways of earning a living.

-- Michael Chermside