> Treating coding as the therapeutic reward for other things (typically tolerating bureaucracy) and then indulging obsessions about it absolutely is unhealthy.

> And I've seen exactly this across multiple large and small organizations in multiple countries, in addition to being all over here and the red site.

I know that experience, but I do have a different opinion on this:

Many such people studied computer science (a similar point holds for mathematics, physics and some engineering disciplines) because they love coding.

Unluckily, the job that they got does involve barely any clever coding, but rather

- tolerating and gluing together shitty code pieces that someone else wrote

- tolerating red tape

So, such people simply do in their free time what they love. And to come back to my point "similar point holds for mathematics, physics and some engineering disciplines": these people try to use their little free time to prove some novel theorems or put their shed full of machines like 3D printers, CNC mills, CNC lathes, laser cutters, self-built pick-and-place machines, ... to work on their own beloved engineering projects.

People who simply enjoy coding (without treating it to be "therapeutic") are still unhappy because working with LLMs is just not the same, and not rewarding in the same way