Thanks for your perspective. I don't claim to speak for everyone. I thought I was enjoying programming with just a few reservations that I could live with, but ultimately these problems became to be too much. The echo-chamber of love for the field, or "if you don't like it you just aren't tough enough" kind of talk really made me just feel like a whiner, especially considering I was pretty decent at it and received a good amount of praise/money for what I was doing.

HN frequently encourages people to go deeper into programming/technology when I really needed someone to tell me to explore around. My intention was to do just that for someone else.