[stubbedtoe]

My theory is that software engineering is fundamentally a lonely activity.

Loading up the context required to solve a problem and hold that state for the several hours to write the code means to be alone with the computer and no one else. To think about abstract ideas and concepts instead of people and feelings. As a social animal, that's not what humans evolved to do.

Software engineers need to prioritise connecting with people during their free time since they are unlikely to experience much of this during their job.

[OutOfHere]

It is lonely, but that's a completely wrong explanation because software development is even more lonely when working on personal projects. Yet, personal projects bring happiness.

[shrimp_emoji]

If you're a social animal, you should have never gotten into coding to begin with. It's for introvert nerds with no social life! How else can you even learn it, anyway? Oh, that's right, by using the easy languages made by corporations (Java, C#, Go) to hire more devs with the promise of an easy paycheck.