I love Shenzhen I/O, it's perhaps my all-time favourite video game despite having left it uncompleted, in part precisely because it started to feel like hard wo

I love Shenzhen I/O, it's perhaps my all-time favourite video game despite having left it uncompleted, in part precisely because it started to feel like hard work. But you're right that what makes it a fun video game is that the problems are: - Clearly defined - Well specified - Solvable - Known to be Solvable - Prioritised - Unchanging - Feedback is provided - Contains closure None of those things applies to real-life, where problems are under-defined, under-specified, sometimes aren't even known whether they have a solution, and are subject to the whims and changing desires of product management. And even if you navigate all of that and produce a solution, you often get little feedback, or indeed sometimes never get any closure at all. Sometimes the project gets sidelined and it never goes live or it goes live and you don't know if a single customer even interacted with it. You have to learn to deal with all of that, which can be harder than the actual programming.