It's not a dichotomy, though. I loved coding for the sake of it. I found it relaxing, meditative, and I was very good at it. I also like building things where coding is a necessary step.
And while I don't go all in on the notion of revealed preferences, a few facts stand out to me:
1. Nothing is actually stopping me from writing code by hand for fun, but I don't
2. There is no practical reason to manually write homebrew SNES games in assembly language, but some people do
3. I still have no deficit of fun problems to dig into, to sit and ponder, and then experiment with. They just aren't coding problems, and I have far more powerful tools to help me navigate prior art, test out hypotheses, and so on.
And while I don't go all in on the notion of revealed preferences, a few facts stand out to me:
1. Nothing is actually stopping me from writing code by hand for fun, but I don't
2. There is no practical reason to manually write homebrew SNES games in assembly language, but some people do
3. I still have no deficit of fun problems to dig into, to sit and ponder, and then experiment with. They just aren't coding problems, and I have far more powerful tools to help me navigate prior art, test out hypotheses, and so on.