I once worked at a startup that went out of business. The organization was nearly three years old and had about 50 full-time engineers. On the final day we dropped the database, archived the repo, and went to the bars. In that moment it was hard to not be nihilist and think to myself, what was the point in all of that? Luckily I had a great boss and mentor who saw my struggle and quickly gave me some valuable insight that I haven't forgotten. He pulled me aside and told me: 'You've got to love the act of building'. I'm still figuring out exactly what he meant, but I think I've started to understand it a little bit better.
If you work in a good engineering culture, inevitably, all of the code you ever write will be deleted. As our understanding of the world progresses, the tools we have available evolve, and the requirements of what we set out to achieve all continuously change, the code will also be constantly changing. Software engineers are not in the business of building timeless monuments, we are in the business of building solutions for problems. Even the most famous and important code ever written is temporary and will be replaced by code written by another engineer. MapReduce, the engine created in 2004 that allowed Google to exist, has long been obsolete. None of the code is ever holy.
When I saw the terminal spit out the output status as we dropped our production database, I was reminded of those Tibet Monks which make the sand art just to inevitably wipe it away. In my short and impactful conversation with my mentor, he reminded me just how much we all learned during this startup experience and how much more we were qualified to tackle hard problems. We had grown in the experience not just in our ability to write quality code, but in our ability to model society and solve problems with the code. I remember being really happy and instantly nostalgic of the work we had done, the fun we had, and the connections I made, over that time.
The happiest engineers love building. It is cliché for a reason: It truly is all about the journey and not the destination.