Again you're conflating things and are now also moving goalposts (overwork->moderate work) and asking me for very precise kinds of studies while refusing to even point towards the basis for your own claims. On top of this you're implying that I'm some kind of lunatic by associating my questions with climate denial.

It's clear that you're more interested in "winning" than actually have a reasonable discussion so goodbye. I've had less frustrating exchanges with leprechauns.

Come on. We’ve had decades of occupational-health research on cognitive load, stress, and hours. The pattern is clear. Higher demands and longer hours raise depression risk. Lab and field work shows day-long cognitive tasks produce measurable fatigue, decision drift, and brain chemistry changes. These are universally accepted.

And yet, you now want me to source individual studies on those effects in a HN thread? Yes, in this instance you are approaching flat-earth/climate-change-denial levels of discourse. Reducing cognitive load is an unambiguous good.

If you think routine coding itself improves brain health or cognitive ability, produce the studies showing as you demanded from me, because that is a controversial claim. Or you can crash out of the conversation.