What Happens When Software Development Isn't Fun Anymore?

by Ed Yourdon

When I got into the software field, back in the Dark Ages, I couldn't believe that someone would actually pay me an above-average salary to have fun. I suppose there are other industries where people have fun -- baseball players seem to enjoy themselves, from what I can tell -- but it was hard for me to imagine that there was anything more intriguing, more challenging, more satisfying, and more exhilirating than developing and debugging a large complex software system. I worked long hours -- often exceeding a hundred hours a week -- not because of deadline pressures, but because I simply couldn't tear myself away from having so much fun.

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What Happens When Software Development Isn't Fun Anymore? 14 October 1998