Any other programmer lost their mind?

Hey there, first of all: yes, there are examples of programmers that lost their mind, but none of them were coherently wondering about that so I think you're still in control of most of your marbles. That said: software development, even though it is isn't physically taxing can be mentally quite taxing, especially in dysfunctional organizations. Burning out from that is far less rare than ending up losing your mind so I'd check for that possibility first. One big common element with burn outs seems to be that there are a ton of things that you observe and think about that need fixing but that you are incapable of doing so. If that was a factor when you quit then maybe you are in fact burned out.

I spent three years of my life on an island doing nothing recovering from a mild case of burn-out and the next 15 years after that on making sure it would never happen again. It scared the crap out of me to go from being very active and focused to being unable to get myself out of bed for any reason at all. But after a while things slowly got better and as I got more tuned in to the root cause I managed to avoid the kind of circumstances that led to it better as well. Being financially more successful than before also helped a lot.

One thing that made a huge difference during those three years was that instead of doing mental work I did a ton of physical work, which served as some kind of distraction and helped me to sleep by being physically tired, rather than to lay awake all night thinking about problems.

I hope this helps, you can google my blog and the term burn out and there will be some more writing about this. Hang in there, you'll make it through, especially if you are open to reflection.

Finally: your total repulsion for the software industry is probably a commonality with everybody that has been in it long enough, we have these amazing tools and we build total crap with it, hard not to be frustrated.

Well, here is my take on this.

I feel there is a LOT happening in the SW field and it's hard to keep up with all these things.

Every other tool is now AI/ML powered and there is always a better library/framework every alternate week.

Honestly, it takes a toll and made me wonder, what the hell am I doing? Do I have to keep up with all these till I am on this field?

I am now trying to find something tangible to keep me motivated apart from the money.

Farming is something that I found a little therapeutic. It's slow, rigorous but bears fruits.

Yep. I’m done. I’ve been out of work for around a year, and frankly at this point I don’t even want to go back.

I hate software. I have no interest in learning the next popular language/framework/domain. Most of it bores me to death anyway or is far out of reach.

I started programming when I was a kid, and frankly, I knew I never wanted to do it professionally. Unfortunately, my immediate post high school plans fell through and I decided to do it solely because it was the only thing I could do to provide any sort of economic stability. There’s an HN comment I have saved that puts it better than I could: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32713325

The problem is there’s no where else to go. Any other career I’ve ever thought of doing requires years and thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of education, and the work available to an uneducated person who’s spent their career on something else is dead-end.

I'm surprised that you'd be eating through savings while living with your parents unless you're buying some very expensive cards.

I'm more of an ops guy here than strictly dev if it makes any difference, but I hit a wall pretty early in my career as far as realizing how much bullshit there is in the industry. I thought the goal was to use technology to assist people in their endeavors, but I worked with a lot of startups in the early to mid 10's and it was pretty obvious to me back then that it was ZIRP (though I wouldn't have known that term at the time) behavior; a lot of people who seemed more interested in living the cool founder lifestyle, whatever nominal product they were working on seemed secondary.

Watching the big tech guys deteriorate into abusive wannabe or actual monopolists didn't help.

So the 10's were a slide for me, but the pandemic lockdowns really brought things to a head where I really hit the wall - it turns out that while I'm glad for the flexibility of the occasional WFH day, the thought of being chained to a desk at my house for 8 hours a day for another 30ish years feels like a diet version of hell (24 hours/day for eternity would be full calorie hell).

At some point, I also moved back with my parents. If you get along with them, having someone on your side who doesn't want anything from you is a wonderful thing.

It turns out getting laid off was one of the best things to happen to me. The terms were good enough that I more or less got a paid sabbatical which I used to help the parents with some construction work they were up to which had some benefits for my physical health that had deteriorated, and they appreciated it.

Now I work all-around ops at a small, local medical software company in person. I don't know how long this sort of thing is viable (but they've been in business a long time, so I assume they've got parts of this figured out). It's really nice to just make a product that works for our customers and doesn't try to extract value/control from them.

Yes, though I lost it when I moved back with my parents. I didn't recognise it until they confronted me with it. They had moved to a place where I knew no one, and my mind wasn't in a place where meeting anyone would ever happen. My solution, though I am not recommending it, was that one day I packed a bag and headed to somewhere where I might meet up with people I knew. I had no accomodation but I did meet some old friends and I slept that night in two armchairs pushed together. I never lived with my parents again.

I think the moral might be that we all need other physical people to relate to. Sadly today actually being with people is too easy to avoid.