[petercooper]

Someone who doesn't seem to aloof and distant from other people will be better off (take _why for example).

_why isn't the best example - he was awesome, but part of his appeal was that he was distant and not on the same plane as the rest of us.. just not in a negative way. Nonetheless, before he disappeared he tweeted:

programming is rather thankless. u see your works become replaced by superior ones in a year. unable to run at all in a few more.

Even though he didn't attract much negativity due to his whimsical, impenetrable persona, it didn't seem to help him feel much better about his excellent work.

[amackera]

This is something that has bothered me a lot in the past. Other engineers build bridges and towers and monuments that stand for years and years. The beautiful code written by a good programmer might be replaced 8 months later by a junior who doesn't understand it.

I suppose in our profession we are able to perpetuate ourselves by communicating our ideas into the world. Our influence is felt in posterity through the inspiration of thought in our successors. The kernel may evolve over time, but its evolution may be guided by the initial conditions of its initial code base (and subsequent changes).

A civil engineer may be directly remembered by the the bridge that bears his or her name; a software engineer may be indirectly remembered by the smart code he or she has written.

[aristus]

Comparing a Rails library to a bridge isn't quite right. Most things lone hackers write are bike sheds and family homes. No one builds a bridge alone.

You want a legacy? Move up the food chain and start discovering new data structures and algorithms. Or work on a large project like GMail.

[rapind]

What I love about that comment by _why is that in my own experience the code I'm least proud of lives on and on and on... Someone please replace it.