I'm a programmer because I enjoy it, my employer seems to value the results and I am relatively well compensated for my time.
We should really make an effort to try to accommodate the people in the programming profession who do not want to spend their free time coding on projects. Programming is very, very enjoyable (to me), but I have a family with which I want to spend as much time as possible. Do I want to write a web-scraper in rust in my free time? Sure it sounds like a nice exercise. Would I rather spend that time with my kids? Yes.
I don't think we should accommodate anybody with the handle 'xkcd-sucks', much less anybody so flippantly derisive of people who do code because they like to code.
They weren't derisive of people who like to code, they were simply pushing back against the idea that you must do it as a lifestyle rather than just a profession. I love xkcd (and that username is clearly just trolling people who wrap up too much of their identity in the things they like), program for fun sometimes, and love to read computer science books for fun, but I completely agree with the sentiment that the common view that programming must be your lifestyle in order to thrive in the industry is unfortunate and problematic.
We should really make an effort to try to accommodate the people in the programming profession who do not want to spend their free time coding on projects. Programming is very, very enjoyable (to me), but I have a family with which I want to spend as much time as possible. Do I want to write a web-scraper in rust in my free time? Sure it sounds like a nice exercise. Would I rather spend that time with my kids? Yes.