[jasode]

This article isn't really about the "effects of programming on the brain."

Instead, the author has a pre-determined value judgement of what is a "good" or "bad" allocation of priorities. From that premise, he works backwards to a observation that coding can be addictive. This addictiveness is then judged as "bad":

>someone who may be suffering from what I can only really describe as coding addiction, the solution may be to find healthier rewards.

For some people, the healthiest reward is the coding. For others, it's working on solving a 300-year old math problem, or struggling for hours and days to find the perfect word for a line in a poem, or a sentence in a novel. There are no "healthier" rewards than those intellectual gymnastics.

Sometimes it's true that these "addictions" don't perfectly align with business priorities and client demands. Saying that the addiction is "unhealthy" is favoring the perspective of the business. The other perspective is that the individual is in the "wrong" day job.

[PopeOfNope]

I wouldn't qualify this as an addiction either[0], but it's still good to know what motivates programmer behavior and the dopamine cycle is definitely a factor. The real question is how do we use this information in a productive way (better code quality) rather than a destructive way (needless code complexity).

[0]: My personal definition of addiction is, if you were to stop doing X activity for a week cold turkey, would you experience withdrawal symptoms?

[outofcuriosity]

People barred from flow often experience intense anxiety; I'd imagine that the "addicted" programmer not experiencing code flow would just replace that need with something like a high-complexity videogame.

The author's scope is maybe too narrow by focusing only on programmers. Perhaps this problem can be generalized to a type of individual that requires the flow state to the extent that their other behavior is perturbed or dysfunctional. Compare Richard Feynman's explosive rage when distracted from calculus or drums...

[goldfeld]

Yeah, when I had to stop dancing--an activity that gives me a flow experience every day--for weeks because of a twisted foot tendon, I became a mess of anxiety, and even resorting to singing sessions wouldn't quite give me my "fix", or fix me so to speak. Likewise, it's not about having to stop programming, it's about, for example, having to stop working on a project in which you have lots of daily momentum and flow. I think it's a proper addiction. Now if it's just half-hearted programming, nobody misses it much.

[copsarebastards]

> For some people, the healthiest reward is the coding. For others, it's working on solving a 300-year old math problem, or struggling for hours and days to find the perfect word for a line in a poem, or a sentence in a novel. There are no "healthier" rewards than those intellectual gymnastics.

More to the point, there aren't any other rewards than dopamine. Dopamine is literally what a reward is in the brain. Unless you're just never going to do anything rewarding, this is inescapable.

> someone who may be suffering from what I can only really describe as coding addiction, the solution may be to find healthier rewards.

If your definition of addiction is dopaminergenic action, then you're simply proposing another addiction here, because you're just proposing a different dopaminergenic action besides coding here.

[contingencies]

That was exactly what I wanted to say, if in more words: too many simple dichotomies.