Why We Write Software

A journey through code, culture, and the human impulse to create

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Table of Contents

Part I: Origins

1. In the Beginning Was the Bug

   • From punch cards to silicon dreams

2. The Cathedral Builders of Silicon

   • Software's place in the grand arc of human creation

Part II: Purposes

3. Why We Write Games (And Why We Can't Stop)

   • The eternal pursuit of fun through logic

4. Software That Pays the Bills

   • Enterprise code, job security, and the Excel spreadsheet that runs the world

5. The Art of the Invisible

   • Operating systems, databases, and the infrastructure nobody sees

Part III: Society

6. The Programmer's Bargain

   • What society wants from us, and what we want in return

7. Open Source: The Potlatch of the Digital Age

   • Gift economies, GitHub stars, and why we work for free

Part IV: The Eternal Questions

8. Is It Done Yet?

   • Shipping software and the myth of completion

9. Legacy Code and Digital Archaeology

   • Maintaining yesterday's solutions to yesterday's problems

10. Why We'll Never Stop

    • The future of software and the eternal human need to build

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A book for programmers, about programmers, but not just for programmers.

Note: This book is a work in progress. Chapters will be added as they're written.