I think this is a vastly intersting sidebar.

I'm trained as a mechanical engineer. Good engineering practice is, almost by definition, tedious and boring. Or at least it should be most of the time. And yet there is the creative-side, the artistic-side, the building-something-new-and-exciting-or-differently side, that's always there.

The applicability of this dichotomy to Software Engineering is striking. Working with any particular development tool naturally becomes more solid and more boring with time, but there always seems to be fresh problems to approach in new ways.

When I was going through school, ceramics and polymers were the hot new thing. Looking back 20 years, it's striking, and surprising, what eventually did and didn't get successfully built out of ceramics and polymers. Today only small parts of engines are made from ceramics, and all-plastic cars available, but neither panned out as fully in the anticipated directions and, notably, they panned out sensationally in other completely unforeseen directions.

Looking ahead, I think we'll be equally surprised by what did and didn't end up being economically feasable or sensible with the myriad of hot new things we have to choose from. What's for certain is what we believe now will most assuredly turn out to be wrong in important ways, and right in other unforeseen ways.

I think the best we can do is cover our bets, and keep the workaday things interesting. Those who bet the farm will either be wildly successful, or wildly otherwise.

**--** Steve

>It also depends on how much of your "interest" or lack of boredom depends on what language you use and how much depends on your client mix, the business problems you are trying to solve etc.
>I was pretty bored with 2.6 as a language about 1995 but the business problem and client challenges made that just a small part of the equation. This ain't just about writing code ...
>
>>>What you do needs to be intellectually challenging as well.
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>>Oh? Where is this written?
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>>>Just because something pays well, if it is boring, that fact is relevant.
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>>Hold on. Where are you on this issue? You've said making money is the bottom line, now its not?
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>>FWIW, I am not bored with VFP, just the opposite.