I have always found it strange how people who simply don't care about it spend their days programming, maybe in Cobol, as if programming and designing were just a (boring) job just like any other. Some of them have Ph.D.'s, too.

I always find it inspiring to select my own way of solving a problem, trading between CPU cycles, memory footprint, disk I/O's, mantainability and what else can make the piece of code you write simply unique, and your own. Very often you can distinguish the 'touch' of a programmer by reading some code, seeing his/her own unique style.

Most of them find wat they do boring, just something you do for a living. What a pity they don't see the beauty hidden in what they're doing. And if you try explaining it to them, they look at you as if you were positively nuts.

I wonder if medieval artists (or artisans?) engraving churches were the 9-to-5 type looking for a better job.... and now we celebrate what they did as an achievement of humanity. Will this happen for CPAN contributors one day?