As I have been programming for a fairly long time now, I have noticed a very odd thing happen to me emotionally when I am writing code.  I get very invested in writing and debugging it, almost like I would a novel or movie.  When I put in a fix for a problem and rerun the test case, I feel anxious, as if some sort of gruesome fate awaits me if my assert() fails, and not just an angry red bar telling me the test failed.  On the flip side, when it runs cleanly, I get a rush that's I've dubbed the "Coder's High" because it feels like you are the smartest person on the face of the earth for at least 5 seconds.

The effect carries over to the process itself, such as when I'm interrupted by the end of the workday or a phone call when I am in the middle of writing or debugging something.  It's more than the mild discomfort experienced when leaving the flow state associated with programming. It feels like I've been deprived of the last 10 pages of a mystery, or the last 5 minutes of a suspense thriller.  I actually want to return to the keyboard to find out how it ends.

I had one of those moments this morning when I finally conquered the jquery demons that were circling around my project (in case you were wondering, .children doesn't search the DOM recursively, but .find does; I actually knew that but for some reason I looked at the function 10 times before I noticed I was calling the wrong one).  The psychological benefit has carried me through most of my day, and I feel like I was a much better programmer because of it.  I have discovered that I like that effect more than the "find out how it ends" annoyance, and I've learned to work on a problem up until I believe I have the solution, then actually wait until the next day to try it out.  That way I have something to work on right away when I get in instead of procrastinating, and I might just get a little shot of adrenaline and endorphins out of it.