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Coding, when you're good at it and have mastered your tools, IS meditation (at least on the surface) as you feel an intrinsic sense of well-being.
To be fair - there's a massive different between focusing on something you're passinate about (like coding) and focusing on not thinking. Not thinking and letting your mind relax is completely different from, and often way harder than, thinking about a passion. Jusy "getting in the flow" is not the point of most meditation.
"[M]editation refers to a family of self-regulation practices that focus on training attention and awareness in order to bring mental processes under greater voluntary control and thereby foster general mental well-being and development and/or specific capacities such as calm, clarity, and concentration" Walsh & Shapiro (2006)
"[M]editation is used to describe practices that self-regulate the body and mind, thereby affecting mental events by engaging a specific attentional set.... regulation of attention is the central commonality across the many divergent methods" Cahn & Polich (2006)
The practice of 'coding in the zone' might as well achieve the same effect as traditional meditational practices and be called meditation on that ground. In fact, you are training the control of your attention with that practice.
Similarly, I've found that playing engrossing video games draws most of my attention from pain -- or anything else really.
Also, years ago when I was studying and had headaches, playing chess against computer was also refreshing. I suppose I was using different parts of the brain and letting others rest.
To be fair - there's a massive different between focusing on something you're passinate about (like coding) and focusing on not thinking. Not thinking and letting your mind relax is completely different from, and often way harder than, thinking about a passion. Jusy "getting in the flow" is not the point of most meditation.
Please keep in mind that the flavour of meditation you are describing is not the only one. "[M]editation refers to a family of self-regulation practices that focus on training attention and awareness in order to bring mental processes under greater voluntary control and thereby foster general mental well-being and development and/or specific capacities such as calm, clarity, and concentration" Walsh & Shapiro (2006)…
A lot of meditation in western countries consists of people forcing themselves to sit and focus, then measuring the amount of time they sat as an accomplishment. It doesn't lead to any long term benefit though, and if really forced, it will actually have the opposite affect.
EDIT: Actually beneficial mediation is something else, and the Tibetan traditions flat out understand it better than anyone, period, they're the Caltech or MIT. Other traditions are ok, but they're not the same caliber.
It is not about chanting mantras. It is about realization of the "source" of the mental content.)
Calling a concentration, deep focus of so-called state of flow a meditation is confusing misuse of the language (using wrong associations).
Constant agitation and restricted, repetitive patterns of "thinking" is misuse of the mind.)
To be fair - there's a massive different between focusing on something you're passinate about (like coding) and focusing on not thinking. Not thinking and letting your mind relax is completely different from, and often way harder than, thinking about a passion. Jusy "getting in the flow" is not the point of most meditation.
Please keep in mind that the flavour of meditation you are describing is not the only one. "[M]editation refers to a family of self-regulation practices that focus on training attention and awareness in order to bring mental processes under greater voluntary control and thereby foster general mental well-being and development and/or specific capacities such as calm, clarity, and concentration" Walsh & Shapiro (2006)…
To be fair - there's a massive different between focusing on something you're passinate about (like coding) and focusing on not thinking. Not thinking and letting your mind relax is completely different from, and often way harder than, thinking about a passion. Jusy "getting in the flow" is not the point of most meditation.
Flow is the state where it is no longer a struggle to control your attention. What you are paying attention to can require a very active mind.
Mindfulness meditation involves practice at directing your attention, your focus is on meta-cognition. Your breath is often chosen because it requires no attention. It's boring. That makes it good practice at discarding all the other thoughts that come up and focusing your attention back where you want it to be.
Sure, meditation is a broad term but this is at the core of the vast majority of what's called meditation.
Some ideas involve meditation with a goal (considered attainable or just an asymptotic ideal at the end of the direction of improvement) of achieving a state like flow in this practice, so you no longer struggle to maintain your attention on nothing. Apparently extremely serene and calm and peaceful. Sounds wonderful.
Flow is different from meditation, to paraphrase what ramblerman said in another comment: meditation is an exercise of directing attention. Being good at that can help you attain "flow" more easily in other activities.
I know I've found meditation to seem to be good practice for when I want to focus my attention deeply.
It seems to me that coding is about actively using a lot of your brain. At the abstraction level of a brain or a mind coding is a whole lot of different things.
I happen to think meditation is good practice for directing your attention mindfully, improve your ability to direct your thoughts. Good at directing your thoughts at something? You'll find you enter flow states when doing it. So I see the connection, but they aren't the same.
Exceptionally misguided. Having meditated for an average of forty minutes every day (sometimes for as much as 2 hours a day, in 40 minute blocks) for the last half year and having coded many, many hours in my life, I can say that this conclusion is decidedly incorrect. Most forms of meditation are about doing nothing except breathing. Coding, like any other task, is far from this. Again, exceedingly misguided.
Indeed, I would even say such misconceptions are harmful, since coding has quite the opposite effect. After a day of too much or too intensive coding, I usually find that my brain continues to be occupied with coding problems. E.g. when I'm half-sleeping I see problems that don't exist (at least not in sleeping ;)). Meditation has the opposite effect: the mind becomes calm and unoccupied.
It's important to give the mind rest and time to process your day.