There's truth to this. I find that most of my non-llm work is happening in the "seams" between apps and services - data ownership, security, infra, etc. Things that are happening outside the IDE.
Readit Newskondov commented on DevOps Will Cure Vibecoding · Posted by u/taariqlewis
kondov commented on Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026? · Posted by u/meridion
I am a fullstack frontend leaning engineer of 10 YoE (still employed). In the early days of my career I enjoyed learning about various programming languages and reading technical books (although mostly tutorials, nothing to deep technically). These days I don't do those things anymore because I am now older, a lot of responsibilities, and hobbies that I need to do, and also quite comfortable in my comfort zone in terms of my niche.
I don't do anything anymore these days to advance my career in SWE. Maybe because I am quite jaded because job market sucks, and the job itself sucks (making the rich richer), and any extra time I need to do to advance my career is just doing leetcode monkey grind.
I want to change it this year. I do CRUD apps, and I am very boxed in my brain, thinking that CRUD apps is the only programming there is. I often marveled at people who create database, compilers, emulators, 3D engines, version controls, text editors, etc. Those people are like wizards to me.
I wonder how can I be creative like that? Like, how can you just wake up one day and decide to create magic.
I want to learn how to do those. Any advice is appreciated.
Also I want to do it in Zig because I've never worked with manual memory management language before, and I figured might as well.
I feel the exact same way and my career path and years in the industry are pretty much the same as well. What's usually blocking me from giving other programming niches a try is that I can't imagine ever building something in them that people actually use. Everything I've studied so far has been grounded in practicality and building a compiler, for example, seemed like something that only a select few can build with good quality.
Anyway, I got the "Writing An Interpreter In Go" book and I think I'll give it a shot either way. I think I'm at a point in my career where I'm finally tired of building the same things again and again. I've also been thinking about doing a design course in Interaction Design Foundation just to get my mind interested in things again and detach myself from the work I've been doing.
I'm working on my own card game. Been playing games like Magic for 15 years now and thought I'd soaked up enough game design passively to make something of my own. Want to make a single-player game similar to the Witcher's Thronebreaker.
I know next to nothing about game development and that makes it even more exciting.