For me, the main difference between programming being joy or misery is deadlines. When I'm tinkering at home solving some problem without any timelines, I'm super happy. When I'm solving a problem at work that has relatively flexible timelines (which is rarely the case lately), I'm very much enjoying myself. But when there is timeline attached coupled with "where are we with this" every alternate day, it takes all the fun out of it. I do understand that this is real world and this is how we operate etc etc but that is how it is for me.