Why we write Software

We write software for one of two reasons: to increase revenue or to decrease costs. When you distill down the essence of software development in the dot-com world it comes down to those two choices.

Sorry if this bursts your bubble, but that's it.

Oh sure, writing software is a great vocation, I highly recommend it.

However, understand that all those years spent learning, debugging, testing and patching, still comes does not resolve the question of why we do what we do?

For the 99 percent of us (myself included) who are *not* the top one percent of the programming elite (Stroustrup, Sutter, Gosling, Lamport, etc)... we write corporate software because some 'suit' thinks this idea will generate revenue, or some pointy-haired Dilbertian boss wants to reduce software overhead (cost).

It's somewhat different in the dot-gov and dot-org world, but not much. If this sounds harsh feel free to post a rebuttal.