[benjaminbachman]

In factorio, you have all the information and tools right in front of you. Everything is transparent. There are no black box failures. If there's a problem, you can and will find the source of it and be able to fix it. It satisfies the building+problem solving itch without the painful parts of programming, eg broken dependencies, slow build times, putting an = instead of a ==.

So, yes, programming is of course more productive, but that's not really the point of leisure time.

[mhio]

I like your point about the limit. Real world system debugging can always go lower than my know how reaches. But in my experience the broken dependencies, slow build time, putting an inserter the wrong way are core mechanics of the late game.