>My journey from welding to programming was a leap between two worlds. Though the milieu has changed, the craftsmanship has not. I feel the same sense of pride building a web page as I did a conveyor.

It's really the pride that can make the difference.

Have you built something you can be proud of?

> I feel the same sense of pride building a web page as I did a conveyor.

I don't, building websites is the equivalent of being a factory worker. You're gluing together code written by other people and your own insight is worth very little since everything has been done and standardized already. In fact I really don't understand why we're still busy building websites instead of automating that shit and focusing on stuff that really matters. Especially now that 90% of websites are just a bootstrap landing page for a random company that no one cares about. They all look the same, they all do the same things.

I mean, yeah, you can 3d print your own useless piece of shit and claim it didn't come out of a factory. That it's made in your own country even. But it's still a hunk of plastic that serves no actual purpose to society as a whole and actively damages the planet, if only by a little. And, let's be real, it's also janky as fuck because the printer has terrible tolerances. Maybe you should've just bought that shit on Aliexpress and save yourself the trouble...

The only joy I have left in this profession is coding stuff for myself and my close friends. Everyone else can bug right off. Even Open Source is no longer what it once was, it's just a way to give free labor to megacorps now. Why even bother? Why even take pride in it? That culture was co-opted by people who don't understand it or share its values. They use your labor to build walled gardens and you don't even get royalties.