I saw a colleague of mine cry when I was undertaking my first internship.
Asked them why they were crying and i found out they were very frustrated at a task she had to do periodically, which required repetitive work.

I wrote a script to automate the task without being requested to, since I had some spare time and when I told them they hugged me and thanked me a lot.

The moment when you begin to understand just about any programming language because you mastered one. And you solve problems much more effectively.

Seeing my juniors getting so excited that their code worked.

Sitting down for an entire weekend with a couple of friends, just to work on a side project.
No deadline, just fun. And beer, lots of beer 😅

When it finally works after hours or days of suffering.

Or, when you clean things up and get to delete some garbage code.

Makes it all worth it in the end

I worked on a game jam last year, and for the first time I managed to finish a full software project that wasn't for a job or university. It was really fun to work on, and seeing my vision come to life, even if compromises had to be made, as well as applying all the programming and project management knowledge I'd picked up until then was an experience unlike anything I'd had before.

The community aspect was great too, everybody shared and discussed each other's games and were super friendly and encouraging.

Parts of the code I am working on date back to the early nineties, written in ancient C++ with lots of special cases for ancient compilers by people with 0-2 years of coding experience.
My favourite coding moment is every time when after refactoring a part of the code, it has about 1000 lines less (no exaggeration), is more reliable, AND can do a lot more than before.

Being distracted from despair for a couple moments.

a friend of mine and me developed a mmorpg years ago on friday nights and we were learning a lot of sql on the way. for a tidy nested query that sped everything massively up i got a sudden kiss on the cheek at 5am. best reward ever.

Finishing what I thought would take days in hours all because of focused coding sessions. Realised I procrastinate way more than I should😂

When I teach/help someone with code without telling them explicitly what to type and their solution works and they get hyped af. Never gets old. I like helping people.

Watching the small interpreter that I am building compile and run as I want it to is my big highlight, I am working on a project that a lot of people will hate really (I am trying to bring back VBScript for the web, but adding a ton of shit to it to make it a proper PHP alternative, this is a side project really)

But before that? Understanding the neckbeard rants in hacker news, legit, I used to browse there trying to find perspective of what experts would think, would not understand shit, eventually, skills came (and so did the degree) and I was able to fully understand them and even interact with them.

that also squandered all notions of impostor syndrome.

after six months debugging unstructured, freeform python code from my colleagues, i found java strictness paradisal

Own side project built from the ground up where I understand every corner of the codebase and application, can work at my own pace, and have no product managers, tech leads, or "architects" telling me what to do.

Sometimes in our personal projects we write crazy commit messages. I'll post mine because its a weekend and I hope someone has a well deserved start. Feel free to post yours, regex out your username, time and hash and paste chronologically. ISSA THREAD MY DUDES AND DUDETTES
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Initialization of NDM in Kotlin
Small changes, wiping drive
Small changes, wiping drive
Lottie, Backdrop contrast and logging in implementation
Added Lotties, added Link variable to Database Manifest
Fixed menu engine, added Smart adapter, indexing, Extra menus on home and Calendar
b4 work
Added branch and few changes
really before work
Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/master'
really before work 4 sho
Refined Search response
Added Swipe to menus and nested tabs
Added custom tab library
tabs and shh
MORE TIME WASTED ON just 3 files
api and rx
New models new handlers, new static leaky objects xd, a few icons
minor changes
minor changesqwqaweqweweqwe
db db dbbb
Added Reading display and delete function
tryin to add web socket...fail
tryin to add web socket...success
New robust content handler, linked to a web socket. :) happy data-ring lol
A lot of changes, no time to explain
minor fixes ehehhe
Added args and content builder to content id
Converted some fragments into NDMListFragments
dsa
MAjor BiG ChANgEs added Listable interface added refresh and online cache added many stuff
MAjor mAjOr BiG ChANgEs added multiClick block added in-fragment Menu (and handling) added in-fragment list irem click handling
Unformatted some code, added midi handler, new menus, added manifest
Update and Insert (upsert) extension to Listable ArrayList
Test for hymnbook offline changing
Changed menuId from int to key string :) added refresh ...global... :(
Added Scale Gesture Listener
Changed Font and size of titlebar, text selection arg. NEW NEW Readings layout.
minor fix on duplicate readings
added isUserDatabase attribute to hymn database file added markwon to stanza views
Home changes :)
Modular hymn Editing
Home changes :) part 2
Home changes :) part 3
Unified Stanza view
Perfected stanza sharing
Added Summernote!!
minor changes
Another change but from source tree :)))
Added Span Saving
Added Working Quick Access
Added a caption system, well text captions only
Added Stanza view modes...quite stable though
From work changes
JUST a [ush
Touch horizontal needs fix
Return api heruko
Added bible index
Added new settings file
Added settings and new icons
Minor changes to settings
Restored ping
Toggles and Pickers in settings
Added Section Title
Added Publishing Access Panel
Added Some new color changes on restart. When am I going to be tired of adding files :)
Before the confession
Theme Adaptation to views
Before Realm DB
Theme Activity :)
Changes to theme Activity
Changes to theme Activity part 2 mini
Some laptop changes, so you wont know what changed :)
Images...
Rush ourd
Added palette from images
Added lastModified filter
Problem with cache response
works work
Some Improvements, changed calendar recycle view
Tonic Sol-fa Screen Added
Merge Pull
Yes colors
Before leasing out to testers
Working but unformated table
Added Seperators but we have a glithchchchc
Tonic sol-fa nice, dots left, and some extras :)))
Just a nice commit on a good friday.
Just a quickie
I dont know what im committing...

EOD every Friday

When you use that piece of infrastructure you build for weeks for the first time and it saves you so much time.

Having some time for my Java projects, always so welcoming. ❤️

Honestly when tests finally pass and no bugs are to be seen after a long period of working on something.

When JS changes won't reflect even after Ctrl+Shift+R.