I agree with you that there's a balance to be had here (although I will note that there's a pretty big difference in physiological effect between tens of thousa

I agree with you that there's a balance to be had here (although I will note that there's a pretty big difference in physiological effect between tens of thousands of years of evolutionary history and a few years of writing code). That being said, I don't think we should make "rewarding to the user" a second-class citizen to "technical quality" - I think it's an important component of good technical quality that something is pleasurable to use. My impression is that a lot of self-serious systems designers don't embrace this view because it's easier to blame the technical incompetence of their users.