Firstly, this is the best TLDR I've read in a while and it convinced me to read the whole thing.

> TLDR: I gain a lot of fulfillment by making things. I don't consider things built by others at my request to be made by me, and are therefore much less fulfilling. And then I feel sad. This article starts strong and then heads off into the weeds.

Secondly, maybe this conversations boils into: what level of abstraction are we comfortable working at?

I mean that to the tune of "To bake an apple pie, you must first create the universe".

Few people will create the universe (please introduce yourself, if you are one); some will buy the apples and the crust and put them together; some will make the crust from scratch; some will grow the apples from seed; some will follow a recipe; some will buy a frozen pie; some will simply buy the pie.

I think we can all agree that buying the pie is not baking it. But what about the others? To me, there's an argument that all of them are "baking the pie", just taking place at different levels of abstraction. And I think you can take pride in any of them, and hopefully more pride in whether the pie is delicious and well-shared.