Some simple stone masons built the frame of my house about a century ago. Their work is likely to still contribute to the character of a community another century from now.

The Perl code I wrote today,on the other hand. will be erased and long forgotten before babies born this same day finish high school.

Hope that gets nobody's shorts in a knot - but it's a fact of life that except for really exceptional creations, like inventing Perl, programming is probably the least likely road to creating anything lasting or worth being remembered for.

That said, it is the lot in life of most techies to make infinitesmal contributions to progress that will never be recognized by more than the week's paycheck.

Ya, I don't know. I can think of few things more fleeting or temporary than a computer program.

I personally believe that you're right, but the point here is that however long lasting or rapidly vanishing some piece of code may be... there's a big difference between the possibilities that it is so out of being very good or very bad respectively. A particular one may end up being firmly etched in stone... err, well in bits -that last like solid stone- in some hall of shame at the WTF, which will assure long life to it for the memory of our children, but of course I pray that this won't happen to any of mine! :)

That said, it is the lot in life of most techies to make infinitesmal contributions to progress that will never be recognized by more than the week's paycheck.

Yeah, but overall it's a comforting thought: I know that as a consequence of my bragging about brilliant cranky ideas of mine for Perl 6 at least some interesting discussion was raised and all in all there will be some heritage from me in the beast when if eventually comes alive, albeit of a size comparable to that of a single hair wrt the whole animal.

You know what's even more fleeting? A breakfast cooked.

Worry not.

Or a cold beer on a hot day!

Yeah.