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Comment by XCSme | Hacker News Reader

> most of it too is just trivial oil and tire changes or changing a basic part of two

I bet that it feels better and more rewarding than updating a dependency and spending 2 days fixing all the errors caused by updating, especially knowing that you will have to do the same thing in a few months.

There is something that feels good when you create/fix/improve a real object compared to a software one.

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As someone who works on engines and writes code, let me tell you that the feeling is exactly the same. All complex systems stir up the same emotions.

It's frustrating as can be when it doesn't work, and it feels great when it finally does work.

As a human, dealing with complexity is all the same, no matter the medium.

I do agree that "complex systems stir up the same emotions", but I was more referring to the simpler systems. I enjoy putting the dishes back into the cupboard a lot more than I enjoy moving icons on a desktop.

I know it's cliche, but Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has some of the most valuable advice for software development I've ever imbibed.

His description of the feeling that something is going wrong, and of the emotional shift required to change frame before making the problem worse, that's saved me from more bad decisions than I could count.

Dependency fixing is nothing compared to dealing with all the people you typically find in a software shop, IT, managers, pseudo-developers like SRE, infosec, or devops. Those people are actively blocking app developers in order to extract a paycheck, and sometimes it feels like the app developer and product manager are the only people actually interested in making money.

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