My favorite metaphor for programming is playing chess. Your opponent in programming is the complexity, you don't see its moves before the coding and design progress, before you make your choices/moves. You solve a problem by writing some code but that causes new problems down the line you didn't know existed before you made your choice of writing some specific code. or choosing a specific design.

Chess-players too are in a very "meditative" state when they play, and they enjoy it, I assume because it let's them focus on the game and forget about everything else.