> Still weird how someone who can't control their emotions can spend hours sitting calmly in front of a debugger while coding over many years. I feel like developers have exceptional self control compared to most people.

This can just feel stimulating, immersing and captivating, so self control wouldn't be needed in the first place. An Open Source project is likely something that you are naturally very interested in so it makes sense a person would be captivated by that.

I get frustrated when I have to work on projects that I don't care about - e.g. I work on them in order to make money - but I never get frustrated about my own initiatives, side projects, etc.

I don't have problems controlling my emotions otherwise, but I could definitely see someone being captivated by a project enough, but at the same time lose control when talking to people.

And Open Source may not be just empathy, it could just be literal passion for the project and the idea itself.

In the end I think the frustration is caused by external pressure and this feeling of lack of control or ability to influence things. If you are working on your own things, you have enough power to choose the tech and circumstances to not get frustrated.

The debugger is a relatively simple environment: you have a program, you have inputs, and one of these leads to weird behavior.

When you encounter people, they might be in a bad mood for a thousand reasons you can't know about and that you can't inspect like you can in "computer + program + data", leash out at you (verbally) for no discernable reason at all (and that they themselves may not even be aware of)

When you never learned about that messiness of a system as complex as people, it can feel arbitrary and hostile. If you're the type who needs method and order to feel safe, computers are wonderful, people much less so.

  > Still weird how someone who can't control their emotions can spend hours sitting calmly in front of a debugger while coding over many years. I feel like developers have exceptional self control compared to most people.

If you think that the debugger is frustrating, you've never been married.

I think spending hours calmly in front of a debugger is the reason programmers become angry at people.

Stress builds up and needs to be released somewhere.

What I learned over time is that it’s better to get angry at the debugger and be nice to people. Not a day goes by without cursing that hecking tool that does whatever the heck it wants again, but I smile at my neighbours and try to help whenever I can. I also use HN as a means to let some of my craziest thoughts run wild, so I wouldnt have to torment those around me with them.

Programmers are humans and humans rely on emotion. Got to control the flow and pressure somehow.