People's strongly held opinions on matters of craft are always fascinating and often very informative about a field! The range of opinions here sounds a lot like how mindsets vary between different schools of magic, in Velgarth. 

(Leareth can talk about magic, and doesn't subjectively feel upset, but his body language is a LOT more tense when he's on that topic rather than just talking about programming.) 

Shory doesn't notice at all - she's mostly looking at the computer screens, hers and his - but 448 licks him more when he's anxious.

Melody notices, but it doesn't seem worth intervening about, especially when Leareth has his very good emotional support dog right there. 

:- Would there be any way to get a second laptop at some point?: she asks Dree. :I am starting to get the sense that Leareth is going to be glued to this one from now on: 

"Sure," says Dree, "I can pick up a second one like this."

:That would be great, then I can do language practice and learn things about therapy here without having to compete with Leareth. - Oh, another thing I forgot to ask about earlier: can you show me how timekeeping works here? Then you can tell me what your actual workday availability is and I won't interrupt you in bed again: 

"Sure!" Dree can - now that Melody has at least been exposed to all twelve digits - explain how to read the computer clock and the one on the wall in the kitchen, and gives her hours (when she's awake enough to be up for telepathy, and when she's out and about for the day and can actually come over).

Melody writes all of this down! 

:Er, is it all right with you if I go grab a shower while you're here? If Leareth needs something you can come bang on the door for me or whatever, but hopefully he'll be nice and occupied with Shory: 

"Sure, go ahead!"

Then Melody is going to go enjoy a very long hot shower! Where she does some strategizing about how to get Leareth into the shower after his last bad experience with that. 

Leareth learns a number of new programming concepts via Shory's explanations, and makes significantly more progress on his app, including eventually managing to import that one library and giving it a cute visual interface. He's starting to get tired, though, and eventually he mistypes something in a for loop which, when he test-runs that bit of code, causes it to get stuck infinitely looping with no end condition. He spends a few seconds looking at it in blank confusion, and then finds himself sort of crying again for no sensible reason. 

"Whoa, hey there, we can interrupt that," says Shory, tapping a couple keys on his computer. "See, all better."

Leareth tries to say something to thank her, or maybe apologize for overreacting to a very minor problem, but saying words seems to have stopped working. He hates it when that happens - and, of course, being frustrated about it is inevitably making the problem worse. He puts his head down on the table again. 

448 is going to try to lick this problem away starting with any of it that was on his ankle.

Awww. 448 is a very good dog. Leareth dangles his hand so she can lick that as well. 

:Sorry: he manages to Shory. :I suspect I am getting tired: 

Licklicklicklick.

"Sure, no problem, go ahead and kick back - I don't know what you do to relax but a lot of people need to do a lot of that after working real hard on code."

:I am not sure what I do to relax: Being relaxed is hard. And not something he had especially found the need to prioritize pre-Angband. If he were in Arda he would maybe ask Vanyel or Maitimo to sing to him, but he isn't in Arda and he might never see either of them again...

:- Does your world have music?: he asks Shory.

"- of course we have music!" Shory says. "What kind do you - hm, I guess you don't know our genres - do you want to try an adaptive radio station -"

:All right. What - do those words mean in that combination? I know what radio is but what does it mean for it to be a station and also adaptive?: 

"Oh, it's not actually done with radio. Used to be a lot of music was sent over radio, and what frequency you tuned in at determined which songs you got and those were 'stations', and then people started using the internet and still called particular programs of music 'radio stations', and now it's usually not even a program and you can tell it if you like songs or not while it goes and it'll try to guess what you like, so, adaptive." Shory makes him an account on DecorateTime and ticks and unticks various settings on his behalf and starts it up; strings come in, building up layers of harmonic depth. "This button's for 'hate this song', this button's for 'love this song', this button's for 'more variety', this button's for 'start a new adaptive station seeded with this song' - like if you want your first one to be all dreamy ethereal crooning and then something comes on that's a total bop but not ethereal at all, you kick it to a new station, you can name each one like so - and it'll suggest ad categories you might want to allow, down here, I usually just get notified if a good concert's coming to town but you can enable other stuff."

Their world is so good at things! Leareth thanks Shory, and then decides to carry his laptop over to the living room where he can curl up on the sofa, and hand-signals 448 to bring him the blankets again, since this is easier than attempting to carry them all himself. He will snuggle with his dog and poke buttons. It turns out that he mostly likes melodically complicated instrumental-only songs, though there are a few with a capella voices in many-layered harmony that he approves of, and creates a new 'station' for.

It's nice. He wishes he could show Vanyel, and it's upsetting to remember all of the reasons why he can't do that, but it's still nice. 

Melody eventually re-emerges, wet-haired and wearing another of her new roomy dresses. Awwww. Leareth is being adorable again. 

:Did he decide he was done with programming for today?: she asks Shory. 

"Yup. I set him up with a music thing," says Shory. "I hope his taste doesn't drive you nuts!"

:I don't think I'm fussy about music, should be fine. Anyway, thank you so much for coming over! Did he make some progress? I couldn't really follow what you were working on: 

"Oh yeah! He's really talented!"

:Huh! Well, trust Leareth to be instantly good at a complicated frustrating discipline he only found out existed yesterday! I think he'd studied a lot of math things before, maybe that transfers somewhat: 

Or maybe it's the building-a-god plan. The building-a-god plan seems like the sort of thing that might conceivably have required a lot of skills that would end up transferring to the not-magic that makes the totally magic-seeming devices here work. Melody has not actually explained that part of Leareth's history to anyone here, though, and at this point it's tempting to just literally never bring it up. She also hasn't actually mentioned Leareth's age or immortality, which seems more likely to end up being relevant somehow to something, just additionally really, really awkward. 

:- It sounded like programming is a pretty in-demand skill here? I hadn't particularly been counting on Leareth being up for doing productive work to earn money, but it might mean a lot to him to be able to do that, if there are options to do it flexibly and not too many hours per day: