> I don't feel pride in it (even when I write it by hand).

Hard for me to imagine. You feel no pride in using a tool to accomplish a goal?

> Code has no such personality. I don't tie my identity or ego to code the same way I would an essay

Code certainly does have a personality. When working with teams for a while you can absolutely get a sense for which person wrote what code in a codebase, just by subtle little tells.

You may not tie your identity or ego to it, bully for you, but for me I take a lot of pride in writing clear and maintainable code that contributes to big projects in meaningful ways.

Maybe the problem with software is there's too many people who treat writing code as a mere means to an end, instead of a very important part of the process.

Well, there's some nuance. I'm not really proud of my code. I'm proud of the software that gets built with it.

Code is just sitting in a git repo somewhere, not necessarily running. That's a big distinction for me. Consider that code volume has increased 14x on github this year, but we see nowhere near that increase in the actual usable software. Code is cheap and getting cheaper. Running software ain't.

Another way to put it: I'm only interested in code so far as the value it provides. That value, not the code itself, is the source of pride. If I can provide similar value without any code at all, I'd gladly do so.