I find joy in solving problems with computers. Sometimes a lot. The frustration around dealing with core tools (like your semicolon example) has never particu

I find joy in solving problems with computers. Sometimes a lot. The frustration around dealing with core tools (like your semicolon example) has never particularly bothered me. After all, the rules are learnable, and are usually there for a reason. I like working on my own problems, but doing stuff for someone else is good too. Even if I'm being asked to solve not-quite-the-right problem (I'll speak up about this, but at the end of the day: paid to hide in a corner and program? Hell yeah.) That said, if you see me in the office, "confused, frustrated, or angry" is a real possibility, and I do something find myself seriously wondering whether it's a career where I have much of a future. Thing is, it's never the programming that's the issue. Rather, it's management approaches which downplay the one-on-one person-versus-computer aspect, and instead maintain that software should be the result of a team following a somewhat-defined process. Collective ownership, pairing, and big piles of standards to follow completely destroy the individual, almost-artisanal side of programming. That's when it starts to look like a slog.