Whoa, excellent insights. This could be an essay on its own. The ability to enjoy Sudoku-work is something of a defining characteristic for programmers, too.

Whoa, excellent insights. This could be an essay on its own. The ability to enjoy Sudoku-work is something of a defining characteristic for programmers, too. There's a certain overlap here with the theory of "Flow": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Challenge_vs_skill.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Challenge_vs_skill.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29 It seems to me that programming is special, because repeated tasks tend to be automated away. If you ever achieve Flow doing one task, you'll never achieve Flow there again because you won't need to.