An eloquent quote about programming

I was searching for an email, and came across these well-written paragraphs from an old friend.

It was in reply to an email I sent, about a weekend on a houseboat. There were a number of other engineers there, from Google and other companies. Some of them were jostling to determine who was smarter than whom, or a better programmer.

From my friend:

"Good programmers realize that programming is hard. We are all struggling along together or separately. We do the best we can with the limited brains we have. Dominance games are for the insecure, the incompetent, and the ignorant.

"Given human nature, I think those people will always be with us. All we can ask is to be in a place where good ideas and true ability and hard work can prove themselves without needing to play those games. And call me naive, but I really do think that for all the bluster of the echo chamber, that Silicon Valley really is such a place, and that's really why we're all here."

It is uplifting to read again, even years later. I am idealistic too.