On the Joy of Hacking
Praise for Software as Art and the loneliness that comes with it
As always, I write here only when I'm experiencing brain overflow and something inside me needs to spill onto the page.
Salvatore Sanfilippo, creator of Redis, came out with a YouTube video called "I work alone", where, to use his own words, he talks about: "I'm a bad person and I experience software development as a solitary experience. But this approach has many advantages, which I defend in this video".
Most companies sell product software or services that are just spreadsheets on steroids. This is fine, as everyone seems to benefit from them: founders, executives, employees, customers, and the economy in general.
This is true in many other fields. There are millions of variants of biscuits; many staple foods are even produced by the same white-label companies and sold by different firms with different packaging and advertising as completely different products. We don't buy or use things just to satisfy basic needs - there's status, boredom, and many other reasons.
This dual nature of software, as both a commercial product and a form of creative expression, creates an inevitable tension, especially in talented people. While most business software is indeed a product for consumption, there exists another realm where code transcends mere utility.
This is where software becomes art, where each algorithm, function, design decision, architectural detail, brings the distinct signature of its creator.
But this pursuit of software craftsmanship often leads to a peculiar kind of loneliness. When you've tasted the freedom of creating something truly yours, something that reflects your unique vision and technical aesthetics, it becomes harder to find satisfaction in the conventional corporate approach to software development.
Take Redis, for example. While it's now a crucial piece of infrastructure used by countless companies, it began as Salvatore's personal vision of what his creation should be. Its elegance and simplicity weren't designed by committee - they emerged from one person's deep understanding and artistic sensibility.
This is the paradox many passionate software engineers face. The deep qualities that make us somehow good at our craft, our attention to detail, our desire for elegance, our need for creative control, can make us difficult teammates in traditional corporate environments. If you've ever considered yourself an artist of software, even once, you may have felt the struggle of working in an industry where code is merely a means to an end. Needless to say, AI (in its brainless copilot-version usage, more on this topic will come soon) accelerates this disconnection, where the <Tab> key has become the most pressed one on the keyboard. Fire and forget - even less of this production chain is yours, containing mostly your manual labor. Intellectual and artistic abilities are slowly shifting to other areas, where different skills and capabilities are needed - often politics, communication, stakeholder management, and the ability to navigate complex organizational dynamics take precedence over technical craftsmanship and creative vision.
The loneliness comes not from being alone - many of us work in teams - but from the emotional distance between how we see our craft and how it's typically practiced in industry. When you've experienced the joy of building something that's truly yours, something that reflects your technical taste and creative vision, it's hard to go back to building solely through the stifling mechanisms of corporate workplaces.
Yet, as Salvatore suggests, there could be a middle path. Even within corporate constraints, we can get some space for personal expression. We can take ownership of specific components or modules, infusing them with our creative vision while still serving the larger business goals. I remain quite cynical about this point, but I admit (as I found them in the past) there are places where this is possible, operating either outside of or even in compliance with market necessities.
Anyway, I personally think that the most innovative software projects start as personal endeavors, driven by individual vision rather than market research or committee decisions. Like any art form, the most compelling software often comes from a place of personal passion and singular vision, even if that makes the journey a bit lonelier. I keep telling people who are passionate about software to cultivate their personal projects, where they can truly express their creative instincts without constraints. You'll probably never get rich or famous, and these projects might not even be particularly useful to others. But they serve as your playground and sanctuary for true mastery and experimentation, where the purity of software craftsmanship still exists.
As expressed by Salvatore in his closure:
I encourage you, even in a corporate environment, to sometimes take on a project that's completely your own.
Tell your boss, tell your colleagues: “Don't worry about this stuff, I'll handle it, I'll take care of it. Get the fuck out, and let me do things how I want to do them. I'll do them better than if we had ten people deciding because I'll be in love with that project. It will mean something to me because it's an expression of my project-oriented, engineering, creative, and inspirational spirit”.
Give it a try, it's beautiful to work this way. But be careful, because if you get carried away with this approach, it will be difficult to return to the absurd, boring, illogical normalcy of projects done by committee while everyone yawns and nobody really cares.
I also want to include here the original, verbatim, version for my Italian audience.
Vi invito a volte anche in ambito aziendale a fare un progetto che sia completamente vostro.
Ditelo al vostro capo, ditelo ai vostri colleghi: “Non vi preoccupate di sta roba qua, ci penso io, me la vedo io. Toglietevi dai coglioni e faccio le cose come voglio fare io. Le farò meglio di come le avrei fatte se decidiamo in dieci perché sarò innamorato di quel progetto. Conterà qualcosa per me perché è un'emanazione del mio spirito progettuale, ingegneristico, creativo, di ispirazione”.
Provateci, è bello fare così. Poi però attenzione che se vi fate prendere la mano da questo sistema sarà difficile ritornare nella normalità assurda, noiosa, illogica del progetto fatto a tavolino mentre tutti sbadigliano e non gliene frega niente a nessuno.