Painful but True

“You know, when you have a program that does something really
cool, and you wrote it from scratch, and it took a
significant part of your life, you grow fond of it. When it’s
finished, it feels like some kind of amorphous sculpture that
you’ve created. It has an abstract shape in your head that’s
completely independent of its actual purpose. Elegant,
simple, beautiful. Then, only a year later, after making
dozens of pragmatic alterations to suit the people who use
it, not only has your Venus- de-Milo lost both arms, she also
has a giraffe’s head sticking out of her chest and a cherubic
penis that squirts colored water into a plastic bucket. The
romance has become so painful that each day you struggle with
an overwhelming urge to smash the fucking thing to pieces
with a hammer.” - Nick Foster (”Life as a programmer”)