Flow State, Metered

I remember what programming used to feel like in my body. There was a file open in Sublime Text, a terminal beside it, and one problem occupying the whole available field of consciousness. I would change a line, run the program, read the failure, and change another line. Hours disappeared. Hunger became theoretical. The work was difficult, but the difficulty held me there. Every small discovery made the next question more interesting. That was flow state in its natural habitat: a demanding problem, immediate feedback, and just enough skill to keep the problem from becoming either boring or impossible. The reward was not merely that software existed at the end. The process itself was rewarding. Attention entered the loop and came back as understanding. I still make software for hours at a time. I make more of it than I ever have. But increasingly, I am not moving through code one line at a time. I am describing what should happen, dispatching an agent, reviewing what came back,…