When Coding Is Fun But Your Hands Won’t Move

The Problem

I haven’t lost my passion for development. It’s still fun.

But something strange is happening. Ideas for new projects keep popping up in my head. I can design the architecture, plan the database schema, even anticipate where the bottlenecks will be. Yet when it comes to actually writing the code… my fingers just won’t cooperate.

I used to love building things solo. Cranking out features one by one, watching something come together from scratch — that process itself was the reward. But lately, working alone just feels painfully slow.

What’s Going On?

After some reflection, I think this is an unintended side effect of accumulated experience.

Back in the early days, I’d just start coding without a plan. Make it work, break it, fix it, break it again. That cycle of trial and error was genuinely exciting.

But now? The design is already done in my head before I touch the keyboard. I know which tech stack to use, how to structure the project, and where things will go wrong. So this nagging thought creeps in: “Why do I need to physically type what I already know?”

Am I Becoming That Senior Developer?

Every time I feel this way, I ask myself: am I turning into one of those senior developers?

I haven’t started saying “that’s not how you do it” to juniors yet. But when the act of writing code starts feeling like a chore, it might be a warning sign.

My Workaround

I don’t have a perfect solution. But one thing that’s worked surprisingly well:

Deliberately introducing unfamiliar technology into every project.

When you use only familiar tools, your brain finishes the entire project before your fingers start. But throw in a technology you’ve never used before, and suddenly you’re back to the joy of figuring things out. You Google something, which leads to writing code, which leads to flow state before you know it.

Developer laziness, at its core, might just be the illusion of knowing everything. When in reality, there’s still a mountain of things we don’t know.