I’ve written software for a lot of different reasons besides pure utility in the past. Sometimes I’ve been making an aesthetic statement, sometimes I’ve hacked to perpetuate a tribal in-joke, and at least once I have written a substantial piece of code exactly because the domain experts solemnly swore that job was impossible to automate (wrong, bwahahaha).
Here’s a new one. Today I released a program that is ugly and only marginally useful, but specifically designed to shame other hackers into doing the right thing. The rest at <http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2762>. -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a> No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. -- "Political Disquisitions", a British republican tract of 1774-1775
