4 ms·

I suspect it is less about solving puzzles, and rather more about an act of creation that is almost perfectly abstract - with none of the pesky real life issues

I suspect it is less about solving puzzles, and rather more about an act of creation that is almost perfectly abstract - with none of the pesky real life issues around physically building something, getting permissions, budgets, collaborating with workers, waiting for paint to dry etc. For those who get off on creating things, coding is the perfect hit.

brianmcc 3y ago
I have always thought of it like Virtual Lego, and would definitely consider it a creative outlet!
- somewhereoutth 3y ago
  Indeed, and I did a lot of Lego when young. Apparently a distinction has been found between first starting building with Lego, and first starting with Meccano - Mecaano is rather more dependent by the physical properties of the components, whereas Lego is just plugging stuff together almost without constraint, so much more abstract.
toasted-subs 3y ago
Technically the fine muscle movement triggers dopamine in your brain. Regardless of the serotonin associated with solving tasks.
- gipp 3y ago
  We have really over-indexed on this dopamine thing as a culture, I think. The important piece is the feeling of internal reward, not any specific chemical. The role of dopamine is so, so much more complex than "make brain happy." I don't think the dopamine response of the physical act of typing is terribly relevant here, for example.
jstarfish 3y ago
> with none of the pesky real life issues around physically building something, getting permissions, budgets, collaborating with workers, waiting for paint to dry etc. Huh. It used to be fun for those reasons. I've gotten so burned out on coding in recent years because once the cloud became part of the stack, so did bureaucracy-- permissions, budgets, collaboration, dictation of style, opaque errors, legal review, bespoke CI/CD configurations, security-related constraints, etc. Coding just doesn't feel empowering anymore. It's like making a sandwich and having to go petition Congress before you're allowed to eat it. We had an incident at work that required multiple people working on a tedious task overnight; it was refreshing to just hammer out a sloppy script, write some tests, sneakernet it and see the prospect of a long night reduced to minutes.
eternityforest 3y ago
I think there's an extra layer for the heavy addicts. One is straight up ego, it's not just about creating, it's about telling yourself you're the next Knuth and Wirth all in one, you'll be the one to revolutionize how we do things, it will go down in history. But it seems they don't like corporate megaprojects, they're not creating features and functionality as much as they are invention new abstractions. And of course the ultimate addict project is a new programming language. Some seem to be deeply disturbed by things not being open source and as simple as possible. If there's a simpler way, even if the CPU savings aren't relevant and it takes far more effort, they want to explore it. Sometimes it seems like they don't actually like tech at all, they like ideas. They want computers to be bicycles for the mind more than abstraction layers to outsource parts of life so we don't have to learn how tax papers work. But they seem upset like they feel some responsibility to get the rest of us to use simpler tech and protect our privacy and add more logic and elegance to our software. I think there's definitely multiple types of addicts with different motives.

brianmcc 3y ago

I have always thought of it like Virtual Lego, and would definitely consider it a creative outlet!

somewhereoutth 3y ago
Indeed, and I did a lot of Lego when young. Apparently a distinction has been found between first starting building with Lego, and first starting with Meccano - Mecaano is rather more dependent by the physical properties of the components, whereas Lego is just plugging stuff together almost without constraint, so much more abstract.

toasted-subs 3y ago

Technically the fine muscle movement triggers dopamine in your brain. Regardless of the serotonin associated with solving tasks.

gipp 3y ago
We have really over-indexed on this dopamine thing as a culture, I think. The important piece is the feeling of internal reward, not any specific chemical. The role of dopamine is so, so much more complex than "make brain happy." I don't think the dopamine response of the physical act of typing is terribly relevant here, for example.

jstarfish 3y ago

> with none of the pesky real life issues around physically building something, getting permissions, budgets, collaborating with workers, waiting for paint to dry etc. Huh. It used to be fun for those reasons. I've gotten so burned out on coding in recent years because once the cloud became part of the stack, so did bureaucracy-- permissions, budgets, collaboration, dictation of style, opaque errors, legal review, bespoke CI/CD configurations, security-related constraints, etc. Coding just doesn't feel empowering anymore. It's like making a sandwich and having to go petition Congress before you're allowed to eat it. We had an incident at work that required multiple people working on a tedious task overnight; it was refreshing to just hammer out a sloppy script, write some tests, sneakernet it and see the prospect of a long night reduced to minutes.

eternityforest 3y ago

I think there's an extra layer for the heavy addicts. One is straight up ego, it's not just about creating, it's about telling yourself you're the next Knuth and Wirth all in one, you'll be the one to revolutionize how we do things, it will go down in history. But it seems they don't like corporate megaprojects, they're not creating features and functionality as much as they are invention new abstractions. And of course the ultimate addict project is a new programming language. Some seem to be deeply disturbed by things not being open source and as simple as possible. If there's a simpler way, even if the CPU savings aren't relevant and it takes far more effort, they want to explore it. Sometimes it seems like they don't actually like tech at all, they like ideas. They want computers to be bicycles for the mind more than abstraction layers to outsource parts of life so we don't have to learn how tax papers work. But they seem upset like they feel some responsibility to get the rest of us to use simpler tech and protect our privacy and add more logic and elegance to our software. I think there's definitely multiple types of addicts with different motives.