Surely this is a general problem and not specific to programmers with ADD? Or do you mean you are relatively worse at "needle sting debugging"?
You second paragraph is just sane things in general. I wish your mindset was more common among my colleagues ...
To some extent, everyone gets mild versions of ADHD symptoms, especially if tired/bad nutrition/no exercise, etc.
ADHD is when these symptoms harm quality of life significantly across many domains and since you were prepubescent (it's a brain malformation, not a series of bad habits)
People without ADHD have a generally-working motivation/reward system which is undergirded partially by dopamine. This neurotransmitter is relatively low in ADHD brains, which seems to lead to signal:noise issues. That’s likely a cause of having a highly distractible baseline state, but also leads to bursts of dopamine seeming more salient and arousing. You have a harder time regulating motivation and evaluating perceived rewards.
A lot of what happens in the brain is based on relative states. If your dopamine is always low, something making it spike will seem more interesting than it necessarily should. If your dopamine trends higher, you’re going to have an easier time regulating interest, motivation, and an ability to transition through things you need to do — particularly things you don’t want to do.
The inverse of a dopamine spike is a dopamine drop. This impacts the brain in important ways as well. In a person with ADHD, going from a high to a low can often cause serious declines in mood and energy. In a more typical brain, the same effects are present but less severe.
So while these are all normal challenges people face because they’re the product of the same brain mechanics, a low dopamine baseline makes these mechanics more extreme in people with ADHD. They are primed for distraction and clinging to things which increase their dopamine. This could be video games, relationships, drugs, hobbies, etc. It could even be work too. They’re also primed far harder falls from their highs. This extreme oscillation often means some aspect of life suffers due to a lack of balance. That’s why it can be a disability.
Hopefully that helps explain the quantitative aspect.
I'm almost 40 and just realizing that I probably have some version of ADHD and your description of the Dopamine roller-coaster fits perfectly with my experience, both good and bad.
It’s very diverse. It isn’t always bad, but often is, and even people with god outcomes can often benefit from the insight of understanding why they’re different.
Looking forward to when a portable EEG monitors are available at an affordable price.
An (imperfect) analogy I saw recently was it’s like talking about debt between someone in a middle class household (non-ADHD people) and someone in a poverty household. Sure a lot of the problems are similar in both word and shape, but the middle class person can’t imagine “had to take out a pay day loan to buy used tires from joes tire shack” and the poverty person can’t understand “we had to replace the AC this year so we cut back our spending, and had to skip the family reunion at the beach until the credit card was paid off”.