The Joys of the Craft

Taken from 1975's The Mythical Man-Month - Essays on Software Engineering.

First is the sheer joy of making things. As the child delights in his mud pie, so the adult enjoys building things, especially things of his own design. I think this delight must be an image of God's delight in making things, a delight shown in the distinctness and newness of each leaf and each snowflake.

Second is the pleasure of making things that are useful to other people. Deep within, we want others to use our work and to find it helpful. In this respect the programming system is not essentially different from the child's first clay pencil holder "for Daddy's office."

Third is the fascination of fashioning complex puzzle-like objects of interlocking moving parts and watching them work in subtle cycles, playing out the consequences of principles built in from the beginning. The programmed computer has all the fascination of the pinball machine or the jukebox mechanism, carried
to the ultimate.

Fourth is the joy of always learning, which springs from the nonrepeating nature of the task. In one way or another the problem is ever new, and its solver learns something: sometimes practical, sometimes theoretical, and sometimes both.

Finally, there is the delight of working in such a tractable medium. The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of
creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.

Especially for the fourth and fifth reasons, that's why i loved programming. No matter what they said about how being a mere programmer won't get you rich, or.. this is can't be truer in Indonesia.. being a programmer is a mere stepping-stone to a higher positions (such as System-Analysts? Bah). I had many experiences where a long-time no see companions of mine asked about how am i doing only to saw his/her eyes looked to me in pity when i said that i'm still a programmer. I'm still a programmer today, and will be a programmer tomorrow, and forever.

The fact is, i held two jobs right-now. Double income? Not necessarily, but enough to get me by. My day-job is an ultimate boredom. The only plusses i had was of course, the fixed monthly salary, the privilige to go home when the sun still shines, the internet connections, and of course, the free meal. But when the sun sets, that's when my day was actually begin.