Joel Spolsky just released a new article called A Field Guide to Developers. The salient point, for me, anyway, was the section on office politics:

The world of programming is very just and very strictly ordered and a heck of a lot of people go into programming in the first place because they prefer to spend their time in a just, orderly place, a strict meritocracy where you can win any debate simply by being right.

This escapism is particularly helpful for me, given the yahoos that are currently running the country. The desire to inhabit a just and orderly place is also a large reason why I have chosen agnosticism over religion. But I don’t want this to devolve into a political/religious rant. Spolsky makes some good points, and if all software development managers took his advice, the world would be a much nicer place. For us programmers, anyway.