I think getting older is part of it. I used to love learning about different assembly architectures and spent lots of time on it, but as I got older a couple things happened: one, other things take up more of my time. Two, I already know a lot about assembly, so I don't get much from learning a new architecture that is probably only marginally different from one I already know.
I remember discovering HN around 2008 when I was a teenager. I hardly understood anything on the front page. I knew how to program a little bit, but only at a superficial level. Now, it's rare for me to come across something I don't understand unless it is very specialized or about some scientific topic. But I think Slava is right that if you want to stay motivated and stay interested you have to find a way to remind yourself of the bigger picture. Otherwise you get bored no matter how interesting the work is. I know a guy who left a job working on rocket guidance systems because after a few years it got boring to him.
Hey, I appreciate your feeling for intellectual humility, but please don't express it as a personal attack. That just turns a noble feeling into a nasty one. Plus it's against both the rules and the intended spirit of the site: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I agree with his point though, and I could have written that post myself. Its not that you fully understand everything on here, its that you are familiar enough that it removes the magic of it. I have been grappling with the same issue, in the past I could read manuals on distributed databases, but now I know enough about how those distributed systems work under the hood, its boring for me
If everything is boring to you I am pretty sure it is because it is trivial to you so it's possible you may come up with more interesting applications. I think a better explanation is that you are not as enthusiastic about CS as you think you are. When I see guys like Brian Kernighan, David Paterson or Andrew Tanenbaum still excited about stuff I cannot share your POV.
I remember discovering HN around 2008 when I was a teenager. I hardly understood anything on the front page. I knew how to program a little bit, but only at a superficial level. Now, it's rare for me to come across something I don't understand unless it is very specialized or about some scientific topic. But I think Slava is right that if you want to stay motivated and stay interested you have to find a way to remind yourself of the bigger picture. Otherwise you get bored no matter how interesting the work is. I know a guy who left a job working on rocket guidance systems because after a few years it got boring to him.