A beautiful comment and I think you add a lot of good thoughts. I must respectfully disagree with one point though:
"my job is not programming. My job is delivering value using programming.
Semantics."
I'm not sure. More than once I have gotten lost adding features no one wanted because the process of doing it interested me, or I spent hours optimizing a routine because I just knew it could be improved even when what my users wanted was a new feature and the performance was acceptable.
When time is limited, focus on adding value through programming, not programming for its own sake or because the problem is interesting.
Semantics."
I'm not sure. More than once I have gotten lost adding features no one wanted because the process of doing it interested me, or I spent hours optimizing a routine because I just knew it could be improved even when what my users wanted was a new feature and the performance was acceptable.
When time is limited, focus on adding value through programming, not programming for its own sake or because the problem is interesting.