I love the feeling of being lost I solving and how it can extend for hours in any particular day. It can happen with both old tech and new tech, old project or new project - the only requirement is large task. (Impossible in agile max 4 hours long task environment).

I havent seen people in that state for weeks on end. It explains peeks of productivity followed by drops of productivity. Does not explain long term crunch.

And I mean, programming is not nearly as risky as Base jumping. You don't die coding in wrong direction and you still get paid for it. It is annoying to be wrong, but imo, we are overusing word risk.