Am I No Longer a Geek?

I posted this response to a slashdot article asking where all of the old programmers go:

I'm not quite 40 yet, but I am approaching it in the next couple of years. I don't really enjoy coding as much as I used to.

I want to go home to my family and friends. I want interpersonal relationships that enhance my life. I don't want to dedicate my life to learning the increasing amount of new technologies. I can accomplish more by making sure the people working for me are coding well and producing good work.

I would argue that coding is a dead end job unless you are one of the best. Algorithm development, program design, project management and debugging are much more fun and take more skill than writing code to a spec. Solving complex problems and working in complex personal relationships are rewarding and fun. They don't allow time for the attention necessary for good coding.

However, you can't be really good at these roles without a coding background As you get more experience, you are called on to do more and more things and have less time to devote to coding. Also, I have found that I enjoy it less and less. I like working with people and tackling problems that are more complex and involve human interaction. I haven't found a good reason to keep my skills perfectly up to date, since I can accomplish more work by making a good design and saving other people's time.

Also, I want to work on my own projects, not the coding assignment that somebody else hands me.

The past few weeks I have been adding capabilities to my GPS downloading software (Sharc -- SHarc Acquires Receiver's Contents) and I have been thinking about this more and more. I would really like to expand the code to include more receivers and turn it into a GPS data gathering library. Unfortunately, I am the only one who knows the code and I don't have the resources to hire someone to take it over. I find some portions of it interesting, but I would much rather track down funding for the work than doing the work myself.

Some people would call it laziness. I would call it an appropriate use of my time to find a better programmer to do the work while I drum up business.