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Comment by starkfist | Hacker News Reader

He was sort of like a contemporary one-man open source Beagle Bros. Unfortunately there is no place in current programming culture for people like this. Programming is not art. It is certainly not whimsical. It is fun, but only fun like preparing for a rocket launch or hostile takeover is fun. Programming is science, it's engineering, it's methodology, it is bureaucracy. More importantly it is Serious Business. Programmers like to imagine themselves as simultaneously being as potentially intellectually important as Einstein and as rich as a Rockefeller. There is no place in that world for cat cartoons and goofing off.

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Beagle Bros! I remember them. Ok, lets age ourselves here. I had their "Peeks, Pokes & Pointers" poster for my Apple II+. They made great stuff.

Thinking that what you are doing is "Serious Business" is a great way to be really inefficient.

Good stuff comes out of organization, great stuff comes of inspiration, which only comes from playing with ideas.

Theres a great Feynman quote from just after he got out of the Manhattan project, where he describes his decision to not think about "Serious Problems" and instead just concentrate on playing with interesting ideas.

Surely there must be more hackers that think like _why, even if they are not as high-profile. Maybe someone should start a (loosely knit) network of such people. Or maybe it already exists. I for one would definitely be interested in joining. :-)

It, to some degree, already exists in the guise of the Ruby community.

Which is, not coincidently, why _why's detractors tend to feel the need to throw in a comment about how much they dislike Ruby.

Programming, just like everything else, is what you believe it is, what you put your energy in when you're thinking of it or dealing with it.

You (and everyone else) are creating your own world. Have fun with what you create..

As opposed to thinking of yourself as Van Gogh or Warhol? Without any financial considerations, thinking of what you do as a scientific or engineering activity is much more conducive to the creation of good software. I'm suggesting that glorifying programming as an activity is a bad idea. I'd prefer programmers thought of their programming activities as no more important than any other kind of skilled labour (clerical/administrative, plumbing, whatever). Get your fun an enjoyment from the obviously creative parts of creating software. Or take up a real art form as a hobby.

See what I mean?

No, I really don't. I'm suggesting that self-importance is a negative trait for programmers to hold. To me, cat pictures and silly songs are actually just another form of pretentious self-importance.

You win.

> cat pictures and silly songs are actually just another form of pretentious self-importance.

Or they're a form of art. Out of one side of your mouth you say people should do things besides programming for fun, then when they do you call it self-important.

Sure, they are art, but that's not mutually exclusive with pretentious self-importance.

Is there anything fun and joyful that is not a form of self-importance?

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