"The idea that one might derive satisfaction from his or her successful work, because that work is ingenious, beautiful, or just pleasing, has become ridiculed"
About this Quote
Wirth is putting his finger on a cultural downgrade: not the disappearance of competence, but the suspicion of caring about it. The line reads like a lament from someone who watched engineering drift from craft to churn. He’s not arguing that people no longer enjoy work; he’s arguing that openly taking pride in elegance, ingenuity, or sheer aesthetic rightness has been reframed as quaint, elitist, or worse, unproductive.
The phrasing matters. “One might derive satisfaction” is deliberately mild, almost clinical, and that restraint sharpens the critique. He isn’t romanticizing genius; he’s describing a basic psychological reward loop that should be normal in any serious discipline. Then comes the sting: “has become ridiculed.” Not “ignored,” not “deprioritized” - mocked. That suggests a social environment where the incentive structure is actively hostile to intrinsic standards.
Placed in Wirth’s world - computer science and software engineering - the subtext lands hard. His career spans the era when programmers argued about clarity, correctness, and minimalism, and then watched those values get squeezed by deadlines, feature creep, growth metrics, and the performative hustle of tech culture. “Beautiful” code becomes a punchline when “shipping” is the only virtue that counts; careful design reads like procrastination; craftsmanship gets recast as ego.
The intent isn’t nostalgia for a lost golden age so much as a warning: when a culture sneers at the pleasure of doing things well, it doesn’t just cheapen work. It trains people to accept ugliness as inevitable, and then calls that maturity.
The phrasing matters. “One might derive satisfaction” is deliberately mild, almost clinical, and that restraint sharpens the critique. He isn’t romanticizing genius; he’s describing a basic psychological reward loop that should be normal in any serious discipline. Then comes the sting: “has become ridiculed.” Not “ignored,” not “deprioritized” - mocked. That suggests a social environment where the incentive structure is actively hostile to intrinsic standards.
Placed in Wirth’s world - computer science and software engineering - the subtext lands hard. His career spans the era when programmers argued about clarity, correctness, and minimalism, and then watched those values get squeezed by deadlines, feature creep, growth metrics, and the performative hustle of tech culture. “Beautiful” code becomes a punchline when “shipping” is the only virtue that counts; careful design reads like procrastination; craftsmanship gets recast as ego.
The intent isn’t nostalgia for a lost golden age so much as a warning: when a culture sneers at the pleasure of doing things well, it doesn’t just cheapen work. It trains people to accept ugliness as inevitable, and then calls that maturity.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work Ethic |
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