This section was taken from Robert L Read's How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary ( direct link to the specific section .) How to Stay Motivated It is a wonderful and surprising fact that programmers are highly motivated by the desire to create artifacts that are beautiful, useful, or nifty. This desire is not unique to programmers nor universal but it is so strong and common among programmers that it separates them from others in other roles This has practical and important consequences. If programmers are asked to do something that is not beautiful, useful, or nifty, they will have low morale. There's a lot of money to be made doing ugly, stupid, and boring stuff; but in the end, fun will make the most money for the company Obviously, there are entire industries organized around motivational techniques some of which apply here. The things that are specific to programming that I can identify are: Use the best langu