I agree. Atlas is a great great book, and one of my favorites. But it’s almost too “important” to be as entertaining and personally meaningful as The Fountainhead. And I certainly don’t identify with any of the characters in Atlas as much as I do with Howard Roark.

I’m not a web developer… but I can appreciate this analogy.

And The Fountainhead is my favorite book. I read Atlas Shrugged first and liked it, but the Fountainhead is much cleaner and more passionate.

And I guess I just wanted to say something on one of the places that actually matter (to me). Keep it coming…

If only….

I’m guessing it would be a bad career move to blow up http://pirates.yahoo.com

This is what I was getting at. No doubt that there are places for coder who don’t absolutely love programming. It’s when they step into or are pushed into leadership type roles that things go bad. It’s frustrating to see bad opinions given weight in companies simply because the coder in question works 60+ hours a week.

I was (and still am) obviously referencing some shared ex-coworkers of ours…

Ok, I’m gonna go buy that book soon, since you’re like the 5th person to mention it to me. I just finished The Sorrows of Empire recently, so I’m actually in the market for a new one.

Great minds think alike simply because there are so very few good ideas. (Though, if it was plagiarism, then it was Brooks plagiarizing Rand, since The Fountainhead came out some 33 years prior to the Mythical Man Month.)

Thanks for the props, but keep in mind that I’m simply yanking from Rand’s writing about architecture. This is the least original blog post I’ve ever written

@Geoff B

I know that you probably understand this, but just to clarify what I said in the post, I don’t want to give the impression that there’s no place in any kind of software development for code monkeys, of course. I’ve known some (even webdevs) that were remarkably useful members of the team, and in fact, whose gentler personalities probably helped keep everyone from killing one another.

Greatness isn’t for everyone. There’s respect in working for a paycheck. Not everyone has to get that deep satisfaction from being excellent at their job. However, the nature of web development is a hostile and shifting environment in which to develop software. If you don’t love it, you’ll probably grow to hate it. No paycheck is worth that, and without being driven by passionate creative individuals, projects ultimately suffer.

Anyway, go read this book.

That sounds familiar.

From the essay “Aristocracy, Democracy, and System Design” found in “The Mythical Man-Month” (Fred Brooks):

“Every part must even use the same techniques in syntax and analogous notions in semantics. Ease of use, then, dictates unity of design, conceptual integrity”

Later…

“Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed from one mind, or from a very small number of agreeing resonant minds.”

I am not implying plagiarism - on the contrary, I would submit that you’ve immersed yourself deeply enough into software creation that you instinctively share many of the same thoughts that Brooks helped popularize.

Well done on another thoughtful post.