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Comment by selff | Hacker News Reader

In the field of programming, we have many great programmers who praise their workaholic ethics. Do you know some great programmers appreciating idleness? Rich Hickey with his Hammock driven development comes to my mind. Anyone else?

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It's interesting because Hammock driven development seems to be a way to defend idleness by trying to appeal to the workaholic ethic. You can take a break because this will lead to better results in the end. Not just because you want to, or because you don't want to work all the time all your life. It has to have a purpose in the end, that will be something bigger than just simply working. He also exhausted some of his reserves of money this way, making him more dependent on future work.

That's an interesting point. I hadn't realised Hammock drive development is such a double edged sword. From this point of view, it also doesn't consider programming as a hobby - aimless tinkering and exploring without any particular problem to solve.

"Blank out the recommendations of these two philosophers, and you can see that the first philosopher is using strictly prosocial criteria to justify his recommendations; to him, what validates an argument for selfishness is showing that selfishness benefits everyone. The second philosopher appeals to strictly individual and hedonic criteria; to him, what validates an argument for altruism is showing that altruism benefits him as an individual: higher social status or more intense feelings of pleasure."

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fATPBv4pnHC33EmJ2/fake-moral...

Larry Wall, inventor of Perl:

"We will encourage you to develop the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris.", "Programming Perl", 1ed

2ed says:

"Laziness

The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-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. Also hence, this book."

Some discussion at https://wiki.c2.com/?LazinessImpatienceHubris

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