[dasmoth]

This doesn't quite say, but seems to imply, that if all software was written by people punching in and our every day and having no fun whatsoever, software quality should improve.

I'm unconvinced by this argument. Maybe compliance with "best practices" would improve a bit, but I see very little evidence that the results would be good for the average user.

I'm pretty certain, for example, Rich Hickey was having fun at least some of the time when building Clojure -- his belief in it is palpable whenever I've seen one of his talks -- yet it's an incredibly well-thought-out, solid piece of software.

Lots of classic games were passion projects of an individual or a very small and close-knit team. Whether that's "quality" I guess depends on perspective. For me, a lot of classic games very definitely were, though (and a bug or two doesn't necessarily detract from the overall experience).