Programming-like activities?

robot-dreams

Programming is quite a remarkable activity:

It has an extremely low barrier to entry
- You don't need expensive equipment
- You don't need to be in a particular location
- You don't need special credentials
- You can finding information / resources just by opening the internet
- You can learn it / do it independently
It gives you rapid feedback (which can lead to rapid growth)
It gives you frequent rewards (which gives a huge boost in motivation)
It's objective and unforgiving (this is a good thing, because it teaches you how to confront reality)
It's intellectually stimulating
It's useful in the real world
- Corollary: you can make money or even build a career out of it
It's badass (or are you telling me that Hackers WASN'T your favorite movie of all time?)

What are some other "programming-like" activities?

I mean this in the sense of "activities that also satisfy the above criteria", but suggestions don't have to satisfy ALL of the criteria. Here are some of the first ideas that come to mind when I try to answer the question myself:

Electronics (but this is basically still programming)
Math (lacks "rapid feedback" and "frequent rewards"; "useful in the real world" is also questionable)
Go, poker, video games (usually lacks "useful in the real world", sometimes lacks "badass")
Juggling, poi (lacks "intellectually stimulating" and "useful in the real world")

However, I've already exhausted my creativity and I'm hoping to go much deeper than this. Thoughts?

Programming is quite a remarkable activity:

It has an extremely low barrier to entry
- You don't need expensive equipment
- You don't need to be in a particular location
- You don't need special credentials
- You can finding information / resources just by opening the internet
- You can learn it / do it independently
It gives you rapid feedback (which can lead to rapid growth)
It gives you frequent rewards (which gives a huge boost in motivation)
It's objective and unforgiving (this is a good thing, because it teaches you how to confront reality)
It's intellectually stimulating
It's useful in the real world
- Corollary: you can make money or even build a career out of it
It's badass (or are you telling me that Hackers WASN'T your favorite movie of all time?)

What are some other "programming-like" activities?

Electronics (but this is basically still programming)
Math (lacks "rapid feedback" and "frequent rewards"; "useful in the real world" is also questionable)
Go, poker, video games (usually lacks "useful in the real world", sometimes lacks "badass")
Juggling, poi (lacks "intellectually stimulating" and "useful in the real world")

However, I've already exhausted my creativity and I'm hoping to go much deeper than this. Thoughts?

I'm an economist not a programmer, but shouldn't the goal of programming be to write code that other people value? Also, you do need other people to program, the people who build the hardware, operate the power system, grow your food..., it's just that with extremely high probability you can count on them being there for you.

You can program to solve your own problems. It's very likely that other people have similar or identical problems, so your code can benefit them even if you didn't plan for that.

7robot-dreams11y

What you say is absolutely true on a large scale. When I say that programming is a very "independent" activity, what I'm trying to describe is the fact that at any time, I can think to myself, "I want do some programming", and within 30 seconds, be doing some programming. In particular, I don't have to call someone, convince them that "no, this will be fun", fail, try convincing someone else, succeed, wait for them to head over, etc. etc., by which point my impulse to do some programming has completely disappeared. You might be surprised how much of a difference this makes, especially for an INTJ like me ;-)