[kernelPanicked]

I'm too deep in the coder lifestyle these days to say what it is like on the other side, but as an former serious music student, I can offer an analogue.

Anybody who has learned music and studied it seriously can tell you it colors the way you hear all music. When I was deep in it, pop music was intolerable. I liked rock, don't get me wrong, but it was all art/hipster stuff. Before you're "enlightened" with musical performance and theory, music just kind of "washes" over you. You get a beat and a mood but you're not taking it apart. After such "enlightenment," you'll hear it all in terms of time signatures, keys & changes, scales & modes, references, cliches & conventions, etc. Much like being a coder, it is a beautiful, cursed understanding. I'm now fully a decade into "recovery" from thinking I was a musician, and I will tell you I really like not having to think so damn much about my music.

So, if that is at all similar (and I think it is; btw, lawyers are another class of geek that have similar problems to programmers and musicians)...yes, it can get better! :)