NOTE: I use "I" in this post on purpose. I am not dissing video games or those who play them. Video games are a perfectly cromulent leisure activity. I only believe they are not for me, at least right now.
In my previous post, My Journey into Development I made two points:
- I can't make a career playing video games.
- I don't get a real sense of satisfaction from beating a video game.
Two months ago, I put some serious time into Fallout 4 which allowed me to reflect on that.
I played on Very Hard and Survival because I knew the game pretty well from let's plays and wanted a challenge. I enjoyed the challenges. I enjoyed exploring and learning the game mechanics and improving my own skills.
But every time I closed out of the game, I felt empty. My thought was, "I should have been coding instead."
Why?
Because video games are currently just an escape when I could be working towards my goal of becoming a professional developer (fancy phrasing for being paid to write code).
I could create a let's play channel and potentially get popular enough to make that my full-time career. But even if that happened, I wouldn't want it. I don't like performing and being "on" to that extent.
So, presently, distracting myself from starting my career in development isn't good for me.
But I also don't feel a sense of accomplishment from it. I didn't help anyone. My favorite things I've done and built are projects that someone has benefited from. My coding contributions at my current company stand out to me for precisely this reason.
Programming gives me the same challenges and dopamine hits as video games, but there is a real world consequence to the things I build or help build and maintain.
I also can't ever master programming. Unless it relies on my reflexes, I am generally able to master every game I play. That ends up being quite boring. With programming, I'll never learn it all, I'll never master it all. The world of computer science is huge and constantly expanding.
So at least for the rest of 2020, I want to maximize my time coding and minimize my time playing video games.
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