[jond3k]

"We work in an environment where hearsay and taste drive change instead of studies and models. We are stumbling in the dark."

I completely agree. Programming became a lot less fun once I entered industry and realised most decisions are driven by fashion and office politics. It's not so bad when it's you and a couple of friends hacking all night on a project because you likely have closely aligned interests. Being an employee, however, means you're a slave to other people's ideals.

I suppose this is why most of us are interested in startups.

You may also be interested in this post by Zed Shaw: http://zedshaw.com/essays/programmer_stats.html

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Surely the first person to write an algorithm wasn't Babbage or Lovelace, but more likely to have been the middle-eastern mathematician the word was named after? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu%E1%B8%A5ammad_ibn_M%C5%ABs%C...