[scaraffe]

Another difference, that I have found, is that programming is immediately rewarding because it's verifiable. On the other hand, writing is without a feedback mechanism or a very delayed feedback or even subjective feedback, which can be painful and demotivating.

[vidarh]

It's one of the reasons I self-published my novel. Of course it may well be it's not good enough and that it would never in a thousand years get picked up by a publisher. But I was certainly not willing to spend months or years even finding out if a publisher wanted it, when I could get it into the hands of readers myself within a few months of finishing writing.

[if you want to maximise the chance of "making it big" traditional publishers are more likely to be able to make that happen, but for my part it's a hobby first and foremost, so that wasn't really a consideration I cared about at the odds of that are extremely poor anyway]

[jaredsohn]

Agree that programming has that aspect. Just knowing that code does what you expected it to do at the technical level is great.

But ultimately when you write code it was done for some purpose so a similar delayed / subjective feedback mechanism is still relevant (i.e. does it solve problems for users? Does it work with real data? Does it scale?)

[greenie_beans]

Interesting, never thought of it like this. Personally I like the no-feeback aspect of writing because I have to find it in myself to keep on writing. Makes it much more rewarding and personal, private, not doing it for the social media likes/brain chemicals. The ultimate form of delayed gratification: never