Now I'm hyper-pragmatic and feel like I've plateaued somewhat as a developer - I'm producing systems that work well and fulfill clients' needs but I'm finding building them isn't the exciting challenge it once was.
Assuming you mean you’re writing more concrete (less abstract) code as a means of productivity, if you want to go back to writing abstractions, you might need to go into academia. That seems to be the only place where the necessary years of thought go into creating abstractions that actually stand up to the problems they intend to solve. I’d cite Haskell and GraphiViz as examples of this.
Personally I’m also interested in deductive databases and ontology but, on the whole, those are too ambitious even for academia these days, which I think is a shame because to me logically organizing information is probably one of the most important problems in IT since the web was created.
Prolog is great for being a really early logic programming language but compared to modern languages it just isn’t very clever or powerful. If you’re interested in logic programming have a look at Mercury: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2959167
I find I'm in a similar mindset. What I've found is that once I stop learning, things become boring. Yes, I know I can take that interface, hook it up to this database, and with a bit of logic glue make a wonderful app come alive. The only challenge in that kind of work where you already know how to do every piece is overcoming the sheer boredom from going through the motions.
So what I think is the solution is to go meta. Step back and ask why you're having to write the same code to pump out the same kinds of apps. What is the commonality between all the various apps you're writing? Now solve that problem. The ultimate iteration of this, if done successfully, is a system that takes a design plus a formal specification of an app's functionality and automagically makes it work. Now you're working at a higher level of abstraction. I don't yet know what happens when you get bored of that. Perhaps by then you'll have developed your own AI.
Perhaps by then you'll have developed your own AI.
No, I think you're maintaining the abstractions you built before that point. Look at all the frameworks that get developed for many years before they're abandoned.
Now I'm hyper-pragmatic and feel like I've plateaued somewhat as a developer - I'm producing systems that work well and fulfill clients' needs but I'm finding building them isn't the exciting challenge it once was.
Where now?