What kind of software development bores you? What do you enjoy?

Question

For me, CRUD apps reduce me to tears of boredom. Same with web apps. What I really enjoy are physics simulations, especially astrodynamics and sound/music synthesis.

What about you?

Answer 1

Well, I have 2 answers.

I always get bored with web programming, I have no clue why, it just doesn't feel as good as coding desktop applications.

My second answer would have to be mathematical programming. I have never liked math too much, yet I love functional programming :>. I don't care for doing a lot of mathematical calculations when programming, making programs designed to do this just bore the crap out of me!.

Answer 2

I think web development is actually more interesting, because the technical challenges to deliver excellent performance are bigger, and because you have a lot more leeway wrt experimenting with novel user interfaces.

What bores me a lot is code that does nothing unique or innovative, but is necessary for completing the workflow or the product. Financial calculation code can often be like that.

Answer 3

When you have lots of boring data collection web forms and need the code and SQL to store it in a DB. Nothing new, nothing interesting, lots of repetition === BORING!

Answer 4

For me, the company and the team members are very important. If I have great coworkers and a nice company to work for, there are no really boring tasks.

But the irritation level starts to rise if the workenvironment is getting worse.

Right now we are working on environmental modelling software for noise and air quality. The team is good and the company is very good so I am happy ;-).

Answer 5

I love those parts of my job that stretch me mentally - figuring out how to model a complex real-world problem and building code to achieve the desired results.

Conversely, I hate all the tedious wiring up that I need to do to fit all the complex bits together. Data access bores me rigid (which is why I use the MS Enterprise Library application blocks to abstract away some of the tedium)

Answer 6

All of it. Pays well, though.

Answer 7

Everything bores me if I don't have to think about it. Simple typing tasks for example.

And as most other programmers I get bored when I have to write web apps.

Mostly GUI apps makes alot of fun, but when it gets to finishing it and make the GUI dummy safe, I get bored as well.

I really enjoy programming when I have to find a solutions for a serious problem or just to demonstrate that certain algorithm or platforms (embedded devices) fits our needs. So I love to be in role like a practical software architect.

Answer 8

For some reason all projects are fun right untill about 70% of completion. That usually is where the thinking stops and the things like translation and trivial bug fixing begins... My personal projects almost all strand at the 70% cap. When the concept is ready in my head and I just need someone to type it out ;)

Answer 9

I'm a contra-Rayne opinion too. I find web development to be much more fun than desktop dev because:

a). it abstracts me away from having to deal with the tedious (memory and proc management) and the hideous (dll hell, windows)

b). web tech is the bleeding edge: new stuff is happening all the time - cakephp, silverlight, json, ajax, facebook api, service architecture, rails, etc, etc.. it seems to me that desktop dev hasn't really changed in 10 years, where I know I'll be learning two or three new things a year in web dev.

c). I'm just in love with the way it all works. Your distribution channel is built in to the world's infrastructure, there's no version support required, there's no installers required, you can get yourself on a phone or a tv without much more effort.

So what bores me (apart from desktop dev :P )? Doing something I've done before , but you accept a bit of that.

What really kills me is not having anything to do.

Waiting for colleagues and managers and clients? yech, please just let me code

Answer 10

The kind of software development I enjoy is the kind where I'm presented with a problem and asked to come up with a solution.

The most important part is getting to come up with the solution. Working for a big business with products that generate big profits, very rarely do they just delegate a whole product to our development team (and for good reason). Typically, marketing and sales have a big say in the types of features that they can "sell" to the end user and the way the user interface should look. Then the design team gets to sit and put these ideas into a nice user inteface. By the time it reaches the developers, we have a full spec and we only have to implement other peoples ideas on time. And this is exactly the kind of development that bores me.

I understand this way of building products though. We have very talented guys in marketing and sales who help us create fantastic products that the everyman wants. Trying to do their job would be like them trying to write my code for me. So I've found myself seeking out problems that they don't have expertise in - software construction problems. Unmaintainable code, huge amounts of bugs, speed of development, our high turnover, our outdated architecture and the poor morale of our developers in general. I've reached the level in my career where I've been asked to fix these kinds of problems and I'm loving every second of it.

This isn't all code level stuff, but I just love solving (real) problems no matter if it's code issues like designing the perfect class interface or human issues like convincing management to include developers earlier in the development process so they don't feel like monkeys.

All I know is that implemeting a basic CRUD interface can either be the most boring task in the world or the most exciting, depending on how much input I can have on the solution.

Answer 11

Stuff I've done before tends to bore me.

Answer 12

Repetitive XML parsing. After a few times it stops being interesting, it doesn't pose any challenges but I need to write a separate parser for each XML document with little hope of abstraction.

Answer 13

Microsoft Access/Excel/Word macro development to "extend" Office applications bores me to death.

Answer 14

Web app development is hell of a boring task most of the time. I really like developing something new. It can be simple programming but if the results are cool I don't mind.

Also I hate the final stage of most of the coding session ,where you need to polish and fix small details.

Answer 15

Personally I get extremely bored doing anything with UI, especially with Web Dev. I personally enjoy new dev and maintenance equally.