It should be fun

Most of the good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program.

— Linus Torvalds

This statement by the creator of Linux is totally true. I would also expand it to cover many other aspects of the open source world, such as those of us who have fun doing system administration. I like doing what I do and I have fun doing it. I also have fun writing about it. I have fun building new computers, fixing hardware and software problems, discovering a new command or tool. I especially enjoy helping others learn about Linux and how it can help them.

In his introduction to “Just for Fun, The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary,” co-author David Diamond says about Linus Torvalds, “The accidental revolutionary started Linux because playing on a computer was fun …”. The email in which Torvalds announced to a small group on a Minix users newsgroup, that he had created a new operating system “… just as a hobby …”, is reproduced in that book.

I think that people who have fun programming create code that’s much better than those who do it just because it’s a job in a high-paying industry.

Like Linus, I play with computers and have done for most of my adult life. How I got here is a long story and would take this post off on an irrelevant tangent, but I do find computers to be a great deal of fun — even when they cause me much frustration.

I like to create programs that tell the computers I have what to do and how to do it. I like being in control of the computer. I like to create programs that look good to the human eye — ones that look elegant. When the code is elegant it works better; it can be parsed better by humans and it can be maintained more easily.

I’ve read a lot of books about programming and system administration and they all have their own sets of rules and best practices. But the books about Unix and Linux are much more fun and interesting because they help me understand the philosophy of the operating system. Books like “Linux and the Unix Philosophy,” by Mike Gancarz is one of my favorites and “The art of Unix Programming,” by Eric S. Raymond is another. Neither of these books is going to teach you a programming language. Rather, they both help readers understand how and why Unix and Linux work the way they do, and how to write programs that take advantage of the unique features and flexibility of those operating systems.

Any programmer can learn a great deal about good programming from both of those books. It doesn’t matter which programming language you’re using, which operating system you write for, or whether the code is for an end-user application or a tool for SysAdmins, or even a new operating system. The bottom line is that the code should be elegant. Part of that elegance is simplicity. Part of it is Zen.

The code I write is all about the SysAdmin tasks that need to be done on my home lab network. Using the enlightenment I found in those books, I write much better code. I’ve even returned to older code and made it better by applying the principles I’ve learned.

Whether you program for a living or just because it’s fun, I highly recommend those books. If it’s not fun now, those books can help you find the fun. If it’s already fun, they can help it be even more so.