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Comment by malanj | Hacker News Reader

I stopped coding for a few years, and recently started spending significant hours a week on coding again. The feeling is quite incredible. I had forgotten how good that high is.

I do think that the author doesn't understand Flow fully. The ideal state of Flow is when there is a concrete challenge with immediate feedback, which coding is great at providing. The other activities he compares coding to don't have such strong feedback or concrete challenge.

The only activity that compares with coding for me is rock climbing. While it is a physical activity, it has the same kind of concrete challenge and immediate feedback. It is totally immersive.

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I think that off-piste skiing shares the same immersive flow-like experience whilst also being a physical activity.

It's the combination of feedback, decision making and then successful completion of the challenge that really combines to create the feeling.

Thinking of the problem, planning your response, and then executing in quick succession repeatedly.

This is surprisingly close. I'd never thought of it like this but it's immediately clear what you mean.

Especially if it's off-piste but an area that you're familiar with. You plan out your run multiple steps before you start, and once you're on the hill you have to be flexible enough to change course and replan on the fly for another multiple steps ahead, all while you're barreling down a hill.

And then there's the moments of sheer terror when you see snow sliding past you, or when you come up on a recent avalanche 1) have to avoid the packed ice and 2) look out for what caused the avalanche.

You're absolutely right - I get a kind of rush from coding that's similar to skiing off-piste. Not quite the same but not as different as one would think.

Yes. Climbing, too. And there seem to be a surprising number of climbers who are also programmers, so it seems to me there's something similar in the nature of the two activities.

His headline of "one hit and you are hooked" suggests he hasn't had much experience with drugs either.

Swimming is my physical activity that induces flow for me. Our local Fitness Center has a pool with lanes half the length of an olympic pool. It's the perfect length for me to get that immediate feedback with a new challenge immediately following. It also reduces all other distractions. It's hard to hear anything else when your doing a front crawl and you really only see the line on the bottom of the pool. It's the perfect flow inducing exercise for me.

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