1. I wish I could find that TCL quote where VB was cited as "Paint by Numbers"...but I'll be enjoying your metaphor as Java being the Bob Ross Painting of programming languages.
   
   import forest.happy.*;
   
     posted by Dean at 04:05:31 PM on July 29, 2004  
2. Dude, why are you dissing Bob Ross!?! I love that guy. You can't have too many happy trees!
   
   Anyway, i think it's also important to distinguish the artist from the artisan. As programmers, we are more like artisans -- like a potter or a cabinetmaker -- and not so much the Artiste, the painter, the novel author.
     posted by Ian Bicking at 06:37:34 PM on July 29, 2004  
3. I saw this
   
   "It's pretty easy to say what kinds of problems are not interesting: those where instead of solving a few big, clear, problems, you have to solve a lot of nasty little ones. One of the worst kinds of projects is writing an interface to a piece of software that's full of bugs. Another is when you have to customize something for an individual client's complex and ill-defined needs. To hackers these kinds of projects are the death of a thousand cuts."
   
   and wondered, "Am I a great hacker or just bitter?" Who DOESN'T go through this crap at some point and hate it? Who actually likes this? I think this is the death of a thousand cuts to anybody, regardless of your hacking status. I think everybody TRIES to avoid them. Alas, I think the people that can actually GET STUFF DONE tend to get some of these because they will eventually get fixed.
   
   Much as my ego would like to claim otherwise, I'll continue to think I'm just bitter. The part that hit home with me was this:
   
   "If your company makes software to do x, have one group that builds tools for writing software of that type, and another that uses these tools to write the applications. This way you might be able to get smart people to write 99% of your code, but still keep them almost as insulated from users as they would be in a traditional research department."
   
   I'm trying to do this with portions of my projects as much as possible. Our software gets customized in all kinds of interesting ways and the easier and less error prone this process is, the happier everybody (cuatomers, consultants and me) is.
   
   Great piece. Thanks for providing the link to it.
     posted by Mike at 06:44:14 PM on July 29, 2004