A side effect of the maturation of the industry, sadly. It comes in waves though. I remember when I first started out as a developer (circa 2003 I think?) things felt pretty boring. I ended up doing C# WinForms/WebForms work because that's what people were doing. Then the iPhone and Android came out and a whole new world exploded. There was so much interesting stuff to learn and, crucially, money to be made doing it.

That wave feels definitively over now, making mobile apps in 2025 is much like doing WinForms in 2003. Hopefully something new will come along that shakes things up. In theory that's AI but as a developer I find AI tremendously unsatisfying. It can do interesting things but it's a black box.

For me personally... I'm older and married with kids. My free time is so much more valuable than it was back in the day. I still try to be a curious developer but at the end of the day I need to get my work done and spend time with my family. There's enough of a financial squeeze that if I did find myself with an excess of free time I'd probably try to spend it doing freelance work. So whenever this next wave does arrive I might not be catching it.