The Developer’s Curse: Knowing Too Much

The longer you stay in tech, the harder it becomes to simply enjoy technology.
When you were new, software felt magical — a command line, a bit of HTML, and suddenly the world moved at your fingertips. But with time comes understanding, and with understanding comes cynicism. You stop being amazed and start noticing flaws.

You see inefficiencies in design, questionable database queries, lazy UI patterns. You can’t open an app without dissecting it. That curiosity — once joyful — turns analytical, then critical, then exhausting.

The curse of a developer is that you can no longer experience things as a user. You’re always the mechanic listening for the engine noise.

But awareness doesn’t have to kill wonder. The trick is learning to hold both truths — the joy of what’s possible and the knowledge of how fragile it all is. You can still appreciate elegance while knowing what holds it together.

The best developers don’t lose their sense of awe. They just learn to see beauty not in perfection, but in construction — in the quiet genius of systems that somehow keep running despite everything.

Understanding doesn’t kill magic. It refines it.