In my late teens and my twenties, I spent 10s of 1000s of hours in a state of intense absorption on programming tasks. (I am in my 50s now.) Am I the only one who believes that it is bad for me to spend more than 20 hours -- and perhaps as little as 15 hours -- a week in the state? Just because an activity feels really good does not mean it is good for you. I guess I should explain a little how I came to believe that…
This is very much my experience too. Binge programming can give you a false satisfaction of having done intellectual work without too great an intellectual effort. I find myself itching to write up some code precisely at those times when I am feeling frustrated that I am not working on something “deep” but when the really “deep” things seem too hard and their rewards too far away in the future.
Re: Coder's High – The Intense Feeling of Absorption
#51Yes. When my main motivation for programming was to get the high that comes from long stretches of time spent in intense absorption, my programming time seemed to be less productive than it is now.