> My programs would never live as long as The Trial. A computer will never live as long as The Trial.<p>I realized this, independently, years ago and it shook me down to my boots. I was working on something, I don't even remember now what it was, some client project probably, and I happened to glance over at the stack of books on my desk, one of which was a 2nd edition camel book, and suddenly, there it was: that book had outlived probably every single line of code I had written when it was published.<p>A book about a programming language that -- unfortunately -- was rapidly being pushed into the museum of computing history would outlive most of the code written by anybody that ever read it.<p>I couldn't write any code for a few days. It seemed pointless.<p>Eventually I came to a new understanding with software development. It's like spending your life making Buddhist sand mandalas. You spend your days, hunched over a table, moving one little bit at a time, and if you're lucky, you create something beautiful, and a short time later someone else will come along and sweep it away and start making something else in its place.<p>It helps to be concerned less about the code itself than about what it does for people. Sand mandalas give people an experience, and so does code: code today helps people communicate, relax, learn, or spend their lives making other things. There is a little bit of legacy in that at least, though nothing that anybody will ever remember you for.<p>Programming is still an important part of me. I still try to write artful code. I still feel a little bit of revulsion when staring at bad code (or, worse, intentionally bad code). But I don't view it as my life's work anymore. Software will never be my magnum opus, if I am lucky enough to ever make one.<p>Anyway, _why was one of the most beautiful things ever made by a programmer.