> you guys speak as if you have infinite time and no goals besides just the act of writing code, with no consideration about what the code you're writing is supposed to do

Can't speak for the OP but I definite care what my code is supposed to do. :) The last little program I wrote was a 40-line thing to compute my estimated quarterly taxes so I wouldn't have to launch a spreadsheet. It had better work right!

I could have used an LLM to write it, but that would have been boring as hell.

Got no compliments for it. No one has even seen it. I don't care; it was just relaxing and fun to code.