I wrote this in response to the question, “What’s the best part about being a software engineer?” It was originally posted to Quora, but I figured Quora might disappear from the web someday. So here is my response, for posterity:
Being a software engineer gives you access to the only career choice where you can simultaneously rid the world of a problem, create a scalable business, satisfy a personal creative hunger, and have an effect on millions of people’s lives. That is the career choice of founding a software product company.
And today, you can do this with comparatively little personal capital investment than times in the past.
There’s nothing like it. I wrote about my path to this realization in my essay, “What One Does”.
I also believe software engineering, per se, (that is, coding) is an extremely fun activity. Software design is complex, multi-disciplinary, and demanding. The web and open source have created an incredible sense of community and shared wisdom around this activity. In my view, we’re lucky to be able to be compensated in any way for doing it. I’d do it for free.
Update from the future in 2025: I still feel the same way.