[TheMongoose]

Right now you're competing with people that have years of actual experience writing code for companies and an army of new grads who know nothing but have the degree and are desperate/young enough to work for nothing or near enough to as makes no difference.

You're also doing this somewhere in the vicinity of the peak of the "AI will replace all the programmers" stupidity.

> Unfortunately, a portfolio is nowhere to be found, as while programming for pleasure, my ADHD-tendencies flit from cool thing to cool thing to cool thing and I never seem to get a project really presentable.

Long term I'd say that you should fix this. You need to produce something that is either real or real adjacent. Now maybe all your half finished projects are the most impressive Python ever written, I don't know you. But nobody is really going to crawl through the graveyard of half started , half baked, and half finished projects looking for a reason to hire you these days. If they are HR they might not even look at your GH at all.

It's also worth considering if you're even suited to a corporate job coding. Mostly you're going to maintain and/or write old boring crap a lot. If you can't stay excited about your own ideas for long enough to finish anything, will it destroy your "sensitive super-introvert" soul to write yet another CRUD app or go change the crusty old TPS report collection system to add the new field?

Short term, get a crap job (like you said you plan to do) and apply for all the crap coding jobs if you still really want to, maybe you get lucky.

Here's a linkie for you if you so choose: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/ludics-guide-to-getting-soft...

It's written for the Australia job market, but I've noticed an up-tick in response rate since I started applying his tips.

[cure8]

That's some clarity, you're mostly right. I figured a corporate coding job would often be quite boring, but still 10x as preferable as serving tables.

Maybe what I need is a job that doesn't suck much out of me, code or otherwise, so I can implement some cool shit on the side. Maybe something will take hold and I'll escape.

Thank you.