programming as a form of art
i think a lot of my disconnect with the tech industry is that i view programming as a form of art. there's a lot of decisions i make not because they're the most efficient or the fastest, but because i think they look cool or they're neat and novel ways of doing things
it's like making a pot. sure, you can make a boring black pot, and it'll work great, and sometimes that's exactly what you need, but a lot of the time i want to create a beautiful painted pot. it's an outlet for self expression and creativity that doesn't really make sense productively (a painted pot is not going to be more effective than a normal ass pot). a lot of others, however, view it as purely technical creation. the goal, to them, is to achieve a single goal no matter what. no room for experimentation, no room for expression. and it's that view of programming that so many in the industry have and that causes me to feel a disconnect with those peers
in other words: im pretentious about how pretty i find the text i write into an ide to be, even though it all gets compiled away and the end user never sees or appreciates any part of it