

“I assume” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
as someone who runs GrapheneOS and looked into the possibility of doing contactless payments: no. it simply does not work. all the contactless payment apps can somehow detect you’re not running the stock OS for the phone and choose to lock themselves down.
cashapp and venmo will also freeze your accounts almost immediately upon installation and login and, in my case with cashapp, insinuate you may be reported to law enforcement for fraud when you appeal with info about your phone lmao
been a programmer for nearly 25 years now… i understand what you mean. i find a lot of joy in not just making a program “go”, but building it elegantly and efficiently. there are a lot of design guidelines and patterns that make that easier and more predictable, but i always feel there is a lot of value in trusting your sense of aesthetic and building stuff by way of discovery and refinement, sculpting.