I recently came across an essay by Paul Graham, entitled Holding a Program in One's Head. If you ever worked as a developer in a profit-driven company, you'll be pleased to read this controversal paragraph near the end of his essay :

Perhaps it will help if more people understand that the way programmers behave is driven by the demands of the work they do. It's not because they're irresponsible that they work in long binges during which they blow off all other obligations, plunge straight into programming instead of writing specs first, and rewrite code that already works. It's not because they're unfriendly that they prefer to work alone, or growl at people who pop their head in the door to say hello. This apparently random collection of annoying habits has a single explanation: the power of holding a program in one's head.

That thought enlightened my day when I first read it, because it makes it all very clear with simple words. Book writers may need an adequate atmosphere or state of mind to be able to write properly. Programmers just need one thing that they aren't even provided with in some places : the means to focus.

That said, it is not an excuse for any programmer to behave like a caveman and hug his code even tighter after having read that paper. Our salvation definitely doesn't lie in the software we're crafting, no matter how technically beautiful it might become. Building a wall between you and the rest of the company for the sake of Perfect Coding is one of the best ways to annihilate any hope of professional progress.

I invite you to read the other texts as well, like this essay about consumerism. The man definitely knows what he's talking about.

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This post has been completed while listening to :

Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex - OST 3 (Yoko Kanno)