What is the biggest difference between hobby programming and professional programming? Fredrik Christenson

I wish I had seen this video prior to spending 6 months in a professional front-end engineering apprenticeship at my current company! It's all true and I definitely realized I'm passionate about the freedom to make whatever I want, and I'm happy sticking to hobby development. They were about to offer me a full-time role and I turned it down because I just hate having all the parameters for each project already defined and having to learn tech I'm not interested in lol

I went back to QA where I had enjoyed the work more, but I've already started my next side project app only 2 weeks after ditching the apprenticeship, whereas I'd all-but-stopped making anything on the side during the apprenticeship.

This is advice more hobbyists should really let land before they try to make a career out of it. There's a totally different level of commitment and a service-oriented mindset needed to excel as a professional developer.