> Every age, every culture, every ethos and tradition has its own style, its own varieties of gentleness and harshness, of beauty and cruelty. Each age takes certain kinds of suffering for granted, patiently accepts certain evils. Human life becomes a true hell only when two ages, two cultures, and religions overlap. Someone from the Graeco-Roman world, forced to live in the Middle Ages, would have died a miserable death, just as a savage would in our civilized world. There are times when an entire generation is caught between two eras, two styles of life, so that it loses all sense of morality, security, and innocence. A man like Nietzsche had to endure our present misery more than a generation ahead of his time. Today, thousands endure what he suffered alone and without understanding.” — steppenwolf

I'm sitting at my home office, able to play with my dog during breaks, while simultaneously having a lot of autonomy at my job. I love it, and would not trade it for anything. People seem to really get used to their way of living and lose perspective, then becoming unhappy. We've got it really really good.

It's more comfortable, for sure. But comfort is not the only aspect to life.

It might even be a negative given how miserable software developers tend to be compared to those with much less comfortable jobs.

As a bit of a stoic myself, I appreciate the appeal to the "some people have real problems" argument.

I think a big part of the frustration or unhappiness of some subset of this generation of software engineer who cut their teeth in "The Golden Age" is lamenting or longing for "what could have been...". Maybe it's our slow realization of Sturgeon's Law and wish that we would have discovered this seemingly universal truth ages ago. Software, being mainly a construction of the mind, has the potential to be truly great (and some is), yet the state is basically "All Software is Shit". Squaring the expectations of my junior self with the realities of my senior self is... disappointing.

I think what we actually want is to be the equivalent of a gentlemen scientist supported by family wealth or a patron, sitting in our study doing what interests us, corresponding with other smart people interested in the same topic, going for long walks thinking about hard problems. Even though we shouldn't complain, we can still strive for this.

Absolutely not. Human happiness is a tad more than having air conditioning.

Yeah, I'll take it all day long. I'm not even done with my first year of my first software engineering job so perhaps I'm full of optimism and hope. But in a previous life I was cooking on a line and moving tons of gravel with a wheelbarrow with my brother. I much prefer my situation now.

... and it sucks that this is the most excitement you (or I) can muster. This means that our sense of agency is dead, along with the ability to innovate.