> Luddism is a strange philosophy for a software engineer.

Luddism and critically evaluating the net benefit and cost of a piece of tech, are 2 very different things.

And the latter is not strange for a SWE at all, in fact I'd say it's an essential skill.

I'm referring to this part:

>I like writing code and figuring stuff out

This is an alien mentality to me.

Problem solving, I'm pretty sure it's the driving motivation for many/most coders.

I find pleasure in crafting the solution, sculpting it by hand; putting everything I've got into making it fit the problem like a glove. Coding to me is an artistic way of expressing myself, exploring, always improving; it's part of the fun to me.

And I don't like following instructions in general, don't like being programmed.

So what's in it for you then, if not the problem solving?

Okay...given that a SWE job is literally "take problem description, figure out way to solve problem in software", what part about this is "alien" exactly?

And yes, there already are solutions to many common problems. The task then becomes finding a best-fit, and adapting these solutions to the specific needs of the usecase...which is another instance of the same task.