One thing I’ve noticed about programmers: they can’t kick the habit — the coding habit, that is.
That statement should expose the fact that I’m not a programmer. I may have dipped my toes in BASIC and assembly language, and I can write bash scripts, but I don’t have the patience, doggedness, and outside-the-box creativity that makes for a brilliant programmer.
There’s also one more quality that I’ve noticed in the best programmers: they just love to code.
It’s not easy to stop programmers from doing what they love to do. Poor pay can make things difficult, but this obstacle can be — and very often is — overcome. Many (very many) programmers even work for free. Lousy corporate management, while it can cause much dissatisfaction among developers, just drives them away to work for someone else. And when a programming language slips out of favor, learning a new language is a quick solution to that problem. Many (if not most) decent developers know several programming languages.
A good programmer always finds opportunities to code; usually, some form of economic compensation can be found as well.
Is there anything that can kill off programming?
Yes there is and I can name it in two words: Software Patents.
Software patents are the one sweeping legal instrument that can be used to shackle programmers — and back up that immoral imposition with legal force. It is used to restrict innovation in one of the largest software development markets in the world: the United States. To make things worse, tts advocates (and beneficiaries) are pushing other countries to adopt software patents.
Posted by Maddog 
