HN user
Have you read Zed's books? I think this "ethos" is captured pretty nicely in them. Most chapters end asking the reader to solve a few challenges, some of these are difficult for a beginner, and it is recommended that you spend some time researching the answer.
Zed Shaw is a natural when it comes to teaching beginners. I recommend his "Learn The Hard Way" books to everyone who is interested in learning to code because they make zero assumptions and start at the VERY beginning. It's stupidly hard to find great books for complete noobs.
I'm totally behind this distinction, and I hope more content publishers adopt something like this.
Additionally, I don't think the answer is to work less and have more leisure time. I don't think that really solves the issue. I think you can spend an enormous amount of energy and time on something you love, and be very fulfilled by it.
Coders have a lot of power in this day and age. Let's start using it to help people and do good work in the world. I'm so tired of meaningless tech achievements, one after another. Elon Musk may get us to Mars, he may help us reduce our energy usage, but we'll still be the same depressed people if we don't work on improving the system.
A lot of the work we do as programmers is for a meaningless product. If we worked on things that we believed in, maybe something that helped people live better lives, especially those who really need the help like the poor and disenfranchised, I believe programmers would be happier people. There just isn't a lot of opportunity out there right now to do meaningful work with code. It's a shame.