You’re most likely correct and it’s a thing that has bugged me on and off ever since I started realizing that some of us, programmers, are not very well suited to linear working (for a lack of better word) like for examples accountants or lawyers. Sometimes you spend an entire day on trying to fix an issue/bug with no luck, until the following day when all of a sudden a brilliant idea comes to you and you solve everything in 15 minutes. Also, should we bill our clients for the time we spend in the shower? Because for me that’s when most of the “eureka!” moments happen (that and when washing dishes by hand).

I don’t know of any solution for this issue, just wanted to point out that this perspective tends to be often ignored when discussing about how to pay for programming work. Also, programming is hard, not so much the languages or the frameworks themselves, but the human relations that any software program ultimately ends up resembling.