> I truly believe its unintended positives are somewhat worthwhile.

If the point you're making is that solving complicated, synthetic programming challenges helped built your stamina and mental endurance, is there another way you could have built the same but in a much more productive and pleasurable manner?

Perhaps in a manner that would also have resulted in the improvement of your community or humanity as a whole instead of being the millionth person to "solve" the same exact problem?