The Three Great Virtues of a Programmer

  • Laziness is the quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labour saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don’t have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer.
  • Impatience is the anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don’t just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to. Hence, the second great virtue of a programmer (ok so there is software there, but it doesn’t do what *I* want it to do, so i’ll write my own damn program to do it)
  • Hubris Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zeus zaps you for. Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people wont want to say bad things about. Hence, the third great virtue of a programmer