I’d suggest you go back to the roots, and find a language that allows for the usage of uppercase letters.

Game mods and Advent Of Code did it for me.

I did a small RimWorld mod and a parser for NoManSky internal format.

Creating both of them was a blast. I had fun doing programming stuff again.

Advent Of Code allowed me to try different languages in a small bursts of the different problems. Somehow I really like this format.

Switch your stack. Try mobile or embedded development. Or dive into system programming. Something that is interesting for you but what you did not try before.

I find embedded stuff fun.

Here’s a single line of code, and it has distinct outcomes you can see, without 48 layers of abstractions and guardrails.

If you want to have some fun again, maybe program a little with artsy-fartsy shaders.

Make a little blog that showcases them and write a little animation everyday - or twice a week.

I’ve seen also “shadplay” which lets you easily write and run shaders using rust. There was also this other tool where people could live-code shaders, but I forgot the name

Userscripts are tiny and make the web better for you and others. Downside: Javascript. It’s not awful, but hoo boy, it is not great.

Itch.io game jams are nice little doses of panic for creative output. I tend to go for low-end systems because on some level I’m still offended there weren’t more pseudo-3D games on 8- and 16-bit hardware. Downside: if you’re not using bare-metal C, it’s because you’re using assembly.

I recommend the Game Boy family. GB/C has a lovely compiler in GBDK and the hardware is hilariously forgiving. GBA supports C++, somehow, and is basically a modern ARM device with the worst specs imaginable. But it’ll do any 2D bullshit you can imagine, no sweat, and there’s bitmap modes if you insist on 3D the hard way.

DOS is also weirdly flexible, and Open Watcom will cross-compile from everywhere. Try to make anything good-looking on MDA / Hercules cards and a 4.77 MHz 8088. Do some voxel heightmaps on 386 and CGA. Thumb your nose at Windows 95 and do fancy lighting in software VGA. Some maniac out there is gonna run it on real hardware.

I have three broadly-applicable and closely-related mantras from game jams:

• Always be shipping. Achieve minimum viable product as soon as possible, so all future work is tweaking. Tweaking is easy. Tweaking can go until the last minute, and is easy to shrug off if it doesn’t work. Implementing a pause function will humble you if you put it off.

• Different ideas go in the next project. You want this overhead title to be third-person? Well, cut that shit out, and make a note for next time. Don’t Daikatana yourself.

• Failure is an option. It is perfectly okay to pull the chute and admit things won’t come together in the next, oh, twelve hours. It’s just a game. You’re just doing it for yourself. And if you give a shit beyond whatever contest you wanted to submit for, you can just keep working on it, later.

None of this is stress-free. But it’s the kind you control, with more reward than punishment. And it’s not a high-stakes zero-sum game about who can take the most adderall.

I’ve made something that’s both fun and challenging: https://cyb.farm

It’s a tech adventure featuring many challenges about computer science stuff (crypto, stegano, protocols, development, …). It starts on the 31^st of October, and will probably can keep you busy for a few weeks ^^

I like to just tackle little things using technologies I haven’t used before. Write a small application in a new language to do something simple, and keep the project small in scale. You get the satisfaction of building something and of learning a new skill, with no pressure, and you get to know whether you like the language or framework. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t do anything groundbreaking or clever, and doing this just keeps your wheels turning while carving out a little bit of creative computing space for yourself, not your employer.

Also consider open-source software you use daily (because that will motivate you) and check out their repos to see if you feel like starting to get involved.

Or bite off something completely different in tech, like robotics or electronic musical instruments.

And if you’re just tired of tech, that’s fine and you may just need a contrasting activity you can do at home. Then at least your work doesn’t become your life.

Use opensource software. Once you start discovering bugs that you can fix, it might start being fun again?

what kind of projects or whatever can i do to have fun again without feeling stressed.

• Write programs that scratch your own itch.
• write bots for communities you care about.
• write userscripts/browserextentions
• do programming/hacking challenges

(for stuff that is always online, like a bot, or a webservice, I recommend getting a dedicated computer, like a raspberry pi or a small vps)

also some general recommendation

• keep you goals small and tangible. If a thing takes more than one sitting to complete, it will add to your stress when you add the remainder to your todo list.
• do the simplest thing, that could possibly work.
• when doing new stuff, use chatgpt to come up with a plan/boilerplate/demo/2nd opinion.

from personal experience: before I went to college, I had lots of fun doing programming challenges. During college I lost all interest in programming. At my first real job, I regained my love for programming, when I started programming things, that actual people need to improve their daily work. Since then I enjoy programming for work, as well as in my free time.

Don’t program (as much). Point yourself towards DevOps, SRE, and/or Platform Engineering. You’ll be designing complex systems and will have your hands in dozens of different tech stacks.

Sometimes I think a straight dev job would be interesting but I legitimately love the SRE space.

Depends on what made you lose enjoyment and what gave you enjoyment before.