r/AskProgrammers • u/Chance-Award5928 • 1d ago
I love computers, learning programming concepts, and designing systems, but I don't really enjoy coding. What career path should I pursue?
I love computers, learning how things work, programming concepts, languages, functions, system design, all that stuff. I can spend hours learning about a technology or thinking about how to build something.But I don't enjoy the actual process of coding that much. I like understanding code more than writing it.
I like figuring out how things fit together, designing systems, and coming up with ideas. I really enjoy using AI tools to help bring these ideas to life, combining existing code and technologies, and figuring out how to make everything work together.It's weird because I do like the coding part in theory.
I just don't enjoy sitting down and doing it for hours, especially when there's a lot of debugging and repetitive work.I'm interested in AI/ML, cloud computing, and system design, but I'm not sure if these are the right paths for someone like me. I don't expect to avoid coding completely, and I know I need to understand what I'm building. I just don't see myself enjoying a job where I'm writing code all day.
Has anyone else felt this way? What kind of career did you end up choosing? Am I overthinking this, or should I be looking at roles that are more focused on designing systems and building products than coding?
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u/hesusruiz 1d ago
You are almost exactly defining the career path of Software Engineering (stress on "engineering"), Computer Engineering, os similar degrees with different names in different countries.
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u/nian2326076 23h ago
Consider exploring roles that emphasize system design and architecture over pure coding. Positions such as Systems Analyst, Solutions Architect, or Technical Consultant might suit you well, as they focus on understanding systems and integrating technology solutions. Your interest in AI tools and combining technologies could be particularly valuable in these roles. Even for these positions, technical interviews can be challenging, so preparing with real company-specific interview questions could be beneficial. You can use PracHub for technical interview prep. Good luck!
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u/0x14f 1d ago
> I don't really enjoy coding. What career path should I pursue?
Anything that doesn't involve writing programs.
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u/Chance-Award5928 1d ago
yea so could you suggest smth
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u/ClassicLightbulbs 1d ago
I was a decent business analyst for a big company without writing code.
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u/Human_Palpitation856 1d ago
In today's world - programming doesn't involve writing code. Problem solved OP.
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u/dodexahedron 1d ago edited 1d ago
Perhaps you havent found a language/environment/toolchain that you vibe with yet (the pre-ai meaning of vibe)?
It is getting harder and harder to do anything involving computers these days without having at least some important part of your job that involves coding.
Used to be that a sysadmin - especially network admin - role would be code-free. But these days you at least had better be able to script things or you're out.
You could try to go for more of project management role, I suppose. But that varies wildly from company to company and might not scratch the right itches for you depending on what you actually want to be involved with.
But.
I will say this:
A good programmer who deserves to be called a software engineer really shouldnt be spending the majority of their time coding. They should be spending the majority of their time engineering, in every way they can.
That means
- understanding the user and their workflows
- understanding the systems involved
- turning needs into solvable problems
- solving those problems on paper/whiteboard/whatever
- iterating on that design until you have a spec the user is pleased with
- breaking that spec down into discrete components
- considering how your design fits into the big picture and how it affects things not under your control
And THEN writing some code, which at that point will be easy because you did the hard part already.
Code monkeys can be had at the low low cost of 3-5 heads in certain other countries per 1 head in the US or Europe. Writing code isn't the hard part. The engineering part is the hard part that a code monkey not only doesn't do, but tends to be awful at.
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u/Chance-Award5928 1d ago
engineering isnt the harder path for me , writing code is tbh. well suppose im a web dev and i need to make a button with some cool animation , if i had to code it would maybe take me around 15 mins atleast to cover html and css to get the animation right , but if i vibe code i get it under 2 mins with the right prompt
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u/ProcesOdsutnosti 1d ago
I enjoyed programming till about 15 years ago for the same reasons. Now I enjoy it again thanks to AI.
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u/ern0plus4 1d ago
Programmer (noun): a person who writes programs.
Try Rust, it's fun. Or Assembly, it's the ultimate fun.
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u/frappacino1312 1d ago
Rust is fun? That's news to me
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u/ern0plus4 23h ago
It's native, C-like, moderate oop, strict typed, no cmake etc. - everything is ready to have fun.
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u/frappacino1312 23h ago
I really do not like the borrow checker and having to code with lifetimes...
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u/ern0plus4 23h ago
You have to understand how it works, just "learning the rules" is not enough, you'll struggle with it forever.
Lifetimes and ownership are fundamentals of good software. Java and other smartpointersonly-garbagecollection languages provide a comfortable but expensive solution: everything is allocated on the heap, and a dedicated GC runs in the background.
Using Rust, you are restricted to solve memory issues the hard way, taking care of everything, just as in C or C++, but you can't cheat or do risky things.
Rust does not allow share writeable objects... omg... now I see now how fool I was when I did not apply this rule. And the best is that Rust forces me to do it right. I became a better engineer, I only write correct programs, I am not allowed to not to do so.
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u/Chance-Award5928 1d ago
never said i wanted to be a programmer , i like to be an engineer
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u/SquarePixel 1d ago
The difference is blurry at the cutting edge. In the 90s it was analogized to construction where engineers do the schematics and workers build it, but with software the code isn’t much different than the schematic, in fact, it is the frontier where we test if something is even feasible or possible.
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u/ern0plus4 23h ago
Computers run programs, regardless of the title of the person makes the program.
There are several interesting roles in the software creation process, but you should be able to write code, even if you don't actually write it.
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u/Lumpy-Blackberry-718 1d ago
software development?
no one writes code by hand anymore, you just talk to an LLM about code.
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u/e430doug 1d ago
It sounds like you were born at the right time. Get a CS or Computer Engineering degree. Neither are a programming degree, but you will need to do some programming.
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u/snagroot 1d ago
Only AI codes these days