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It’s fun to write software that serves no serious purpose

Doodling, sketching, and mucking around with computers have weird and deep pleasures

Clive Thompson
UX Collective

When I started teaching myself to code seven years ago, I initially figured I’d use the skills to create useful stuff: Bits of data analysis for my work as a journalist, or web scrapers to automatically collect info.

And sure, I built those things! It felt great to write code that solved real, practical problems for myself.

But over time, I found that what gave me the most satisfaction were the projects that were much weirder — and which served no practical purpose at all.

I loved making chatbots that composed haiku-like poetry, simulations of the physics of thousands of bouncing balls, or little drawing tools for doodling with right-angle lines.

When I get the itch to make one of these things, I get totally obsessed. I’ll spend hours absorbed as I code them into being, often ignoring my actual paid work (as a journalist).

What exactly is the allure? What’s so much fun about making utterly non-utilitarian software — code that exists not to solve a real-world problem, but to do something fanciful, or silly, or pretty?

Responses (15)

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