I really like the list included in this article and the general thesis of "try to have fun programming again!" However I think the post is just touching upon the deep hustle culture issue our culture has, which is in my opinion a symptom of late stage capitalism, where we are all transformed into nothing more than worker-consumers and the height of success is becoming a worksumer, where you've managed to monetize your consumption activities (streamers, influencers).

How can you justify coding "for fun" when realistically that time could be spent billing to a client? Even if it's just a couple hundred extra bucks a week, if you invest it wisely, come retirement that could be non-insignificant increase in your quality of life! Or maybe the extra cash saves your ass when you get an unexpected high medical bill, if you're an American.

Why would you build a FOSS project when Google or someone is just going to take your project and integrate it into something they're building, monetize their product, and you'll never see a cent of it? Or why work on your own FOSS project when you could do the more optimized thing of trying to get a commit in on react or vue or whatever which will blow the socks off your interviewers during your next job hunt?

Maybe we're all quite ill right now or maybe just I am if nobody else thinks like that. I don't have a solution it just makes me sad that that's how things seem to be right now, and that's just as a relatively well off American developer. I imagine it's even worse if you have to fight much harder to get the high paying jobs that I have much easier access to.