That being said, I do enjoy it at LAN parties because I just build walls and hunt biter nests
* "This game is scratching the same itches as my day job, but with more dopamine and less bureaucracy - how can I play this all the time?" * "This game requires me to expend the same brain-effort as my work/side-projects, but I don't even get anything tangible out of it? Why would I ever 'play' this?"
Neither of them are wrong - and I suspect that the same person might even have different reactions at different points in their life.
I can't easily "refactor" parts of my factory without fearing it will break some pipeline that depends on the changes. I wish there was a way to "write" "tests" or do mass changes safely. Blueprints and robots help automate things, but it's not that flexible.
I wish I could use a "debugger" and step through the execution and play with changes to see how it affects the factory.
And then I finally get to the conclusion that this would all be easier from a text editor using proper programming tools, and more enjoyable to work on a real project that could have tangible benefits (and then never finish that either...).