Namely, writing an engine can only be enjoyed by someone who already does software development as a job.
The thing is that the actual development is too stressful for an uninitiated person. Algorithm design in terms of pseudocode is much easier than making code actually work fast and as intended on real-life hardware. The latter is a huge problem that constrains one's fantasy.
Thus I suppose that coding an engine can only be enjoyable if one is already very disciplined at debugging and testing and has a very strong mindset that's not ruined by numerous bugs that inevitably happen (and, to make things worse, in chess programming, bugs tend to harm the engine's strength subtly instead of making it crash).
The reason why there are people who enjoy this utterly stressful hobby is perhaps that their main jobs are even more stressful and this hobby is something that sounds familiar but provides 'relative relaxation' because bugs in toy software like non-commercial chess engines don't have a monetary impact and thus don't place responsibility.
Even then, it puzzles me that some people like to have a hobby that reminds them of their jobs. I'd rather have a hobby that's orthogonal to the job, to forget about the job at least for a while.
Or am I missing something?
Anyway, thanks a lot to engine authors for suffering in order to provide us, mere mortals, with entertainment
