On one hand, I really wish I listened to my heart more and did something more environmental and outdoorsy. Going back to school for that soon (nearly 40, hard time for a career change, but perfect for a midlife crisis!)

On the other hand, I really enjoyed the creativity of what they now call frontend engineering. To me it's still just a glorified version of the "web design" I learned from the Geocities days, but I find it so satisfying to work at the intersection of light coding, graphic design, UX, (and in my case, an interesting vertical like solar power).

I learned programming first in Logo and Basic, back in the 90s, then Perl and PHP and finally Javascript. I never particularly cared for it, TBH. As a gamer, I always appreciated what coders could make, but I hated math and algorithms, and memory stacks and garbage collection and such bored the crap out of me. Same with network models and scaling SQL and Java anything. Implementation details that I was happy to keep hidden away in some smarter person's black box.

Frontpage (shhh) and Dreamweaver made it more tolerable (these were the pre-Bootstrap, pre-Squarespace days). Not so much for the WYSIWYG aspect but for the focus on visual design over coding. These days that niche is mostly done by Figma. I'm that rare developer-designer who's equally comfortable in JS, Figma, and Illustrator. Just not Java or C++ or anything I'd consider a "real" programming language.

My job got a LOT more enjoyable after React, Next.js, and especially MUI (the component framework that provides React components styled after Material Design). I can finally code efficiently with a focus on UX, instead of wasting time fighting the quirks of JS and CSS. It's a dreamy stack to work in for UI work, and so much nicer than vanilla (hot take, I know, but that's not the point here).

Coding has been good to me in terms of providing a livelihood (I'm not rich, earned between $40k and $100k a year, but that's still more than most of my classmates in the environmental sector). It provided a lot of autonomy and creativity, and the freedom to move between places and companies. If I didn't like a place or a boss, I could (at least before 2023) easily find work elsewhere. It was cushy and mentally stimulating.

But if I had to do it all over again, I think I would find the opposite balance. Instead of making coding my profession and the environment my industry / side passion, I'd find a more mainline environmental job that has coding only as a part of the work. Maybe something like (civil) engineering or GIS or such.

But then I think of websites like recreation.gov, one of the few actually competent government services the feds provide (via an outside consultancy, Booz Allen Hamilton), and realize, well, maybe there's a place for that sort of work, and a value that tech can still provide to the public if done well. Between that and apps like Alltrails, there's a lot of impact there.

Grass is always greener, I guess.

I really wish there was a nonprofit dedicated to technology and nature, where devs could earn a livable wage (not faang, not tech, just like $60k a year) but could serve public agencies and other nonprofits and such without a profit-seeking middleman. Maybe it's not so much tech I hate, but tech under American-style capitalism. Shrug. Maybe I'll start one someday...