I like some of what this essay has to say, but generally disagree with this: When you emerge into daylight, you might well discover that you're a hundred pound

I like some of what this essay has to say, but generally disagree with this: When you emerge into daylight, you might well discover that you're a hundred pounds overweight, your underwear is older than the average first grader, and judging from the number of pizza boxes lying around, it must be spring already. That's depressing, and unhealthy. Programming well is a marathon, not a sprint. Neglecting your health burns you in the long run. In fact, programming is so mentally intense that you probably shouldn't be doing it more than 50 hours per week. A couple weeks at 65-80 is fine, if you're in the zone and truly engaged, but you're probably not doing useful work if you're on your sixth 90-hour week in a row. In fact, I think the people who can truly sustain a solid 70 hpw (much less 90-110+, because long hours get exponentially more difficult) are less than 1% of the population, and not the most enviable for a bunch of reasons I won't get into. Also, the ability to get to 100 pounds overweight without only mild loss of professional and social status (instead of the severe loss women face) is a male privilege of sorts. I agree with the general message. Flow is important, and The Game is pretty engrossing. I had a few months in a managerial position (a while ago) where I never wrote real code and the itch to do something real got very strong. Coding is more fun than a video game, if you do it right. But I can't agree that neglect of health is a good thing (I've seen its end-stage, which is pretty horrible) and, if you let that sort of thing fester, it will make your work worse in the long run.