What I think you're missing here is the role of ambition. Full time on coding might make some people happy. That can happen if you only care about coding as an activity, and not about reaching specific goals. It can also happen if your goals fit within the amount of coding you can do individually in whatever milieu you're doing it. What if the thing you want to do, the software you want to create, requires more than that? Then you have to pull together a team, which brings in a whole bunch of complexity and loss of control. It can be awesome, or it can be draining and frustrating. Sometimes it's both.
On the flip side, "full time at home" isn't an option for many (probably most) people who'd be reading your comment or mine. Somebody has to make some money, not for its own sake but to reach family goals - housing of a certain quality, schools, sports or hobbies, whatever. Then there's a time commitment on top of that. It's a lot with one kid, it's more with two or three, it's far more if any of them or ill or troubled or disabled.
For many people, just having to choose is frustrating. People want to have a successful career and a good family life and time for themselves, and they just can't have all of them. Giving up on "having it all" is really really hard, and it's not immature. In fact it's the characteristic struggle of mature people, leading to burnout and mid-life crises. It's the immature, with fewer commitments and simpler goals, who seem least affected.
That's (part of) why I think your "that's immature" is itself the most immature thing I've ever seen on HN. It shows a startling lack of empathy for people going through something you apparently never have. I hope you are young, because if you can still say such a thing from the vantage of experience that's even more pathetic. The struggle is real, and being laughed at or condescended to as you go through it doesn't exactly help. It's part of what Jesse was warning about.
Grow up without money and constant financial worry, without a sense of home / self and few / no friends and start in the workforce when you're a teenager. You find yourself in "always make more money to be more secure" and "always look for validation from other that you belong". You become career driven as thats what defines you - and a "community" becomes your self reinforcement and friends.
This is an important observation about identity (a sense of self) itself.
What's more interesting to me is that the point remains valid even after replacing "money" with "love", "financial worry" with "social anxiety", "workforce" with "family" and "career" with "family", viz:
> Grow up without love and constant social anxiety, without a sense of home / self and few / no friends and start in the family when you're a teenager. You find yourself in "always love [more] to be more secure" and "always look for validation from other that you belong". You become family driven as thats what defines you - and a "community" becomes your self reinforcement and friends.
The question then becomes: why the need to identify in the first place? Why the need to "define" oneself (be it via a career or family)?
Wow. That's a very interesting point you touch on!
I've noticed that many of my late-twenties / early-thirties friends struggle with their current lives, and I think it often is because of what you describe: they spent so much time trying to 'become' that they never really considered or learned how to 'be'.
I struggle with this myself sometimes, too, and I consider learning how to 'be' with what I am now to be one of my biggest challenges and most important skills to practice.
I don't think it's a late-twenties or early-thirties thing. I'm 50, and many people in my own age cohort (including me) have to deal with the same issues. IMO it has to do with the kind of community one grew up in vs. the kind of community one occupies as a computer professional. If they're significantly different, there's a feeling of being an outsider/impostor and of having to try to fit in. If they're the same, there's no such drive. People who grow up poor and find themselves living amidst the relative affluence of high tech are often the most aggressive about either saving money or showing the outward signs of wealth. People who are the first in their families to get a good education are often the most likely to value it and/or show it off. You see the same sort of thing among people who lived through the Great Depression, or WW2 and its aftermath. In contrast, people who had all these things since birth tend to take them for granted and not think about them much. Cinderella never quite felt as comfortable in the castle as everyone else seemed to.
On the flip side, "full time at home" isn't an option for many (probably most) people who'd be reading your comment or mine. Somebody has to make some money, not for its own sake but to reach family goals - housing of a certain quality, schools, sports or hobbies, whatever. Then there's a time commitment on top of that. It's a lot with one kid, it's more with two or three, it's far more if any of them or ill or troubled or disabled.
For many people, just having to choose is frustrating. People want to have a successful career and a good family life and time for themselves, and they just can't have all of them. Giving up on "having it all" is really really hard, and it's not immature. In fact it's the characteristic struggle of mature people, leading to burnout and mid-life crises. It's the immature, with fewer commitments and simpler goals, who seem least affected.
That's (part of) why I think your "that's immature" is itself the most immature thing I've ever seen on HN. It shows a startling lack of empathy for people going through something you apparently never have. I hope you are young, because if you can still say such a thing from the vantage of experience that's even more pathetic. The struggle is real, and being laughed at or condescended to as you go through it doesn't exactly help. It's part of what Jesse was warning about.