The Candid and the Bizarre

As a software engineer-in-training, it is interesting to read about the shifting sea of opinion concerning the future of software development.  When I entered the computer science program in 2004, I was totally oblivious to what was really going on in the industry.  My motivation to enter the department was simply that I found programming fun.  Five years later, I still enjoy the thrill of taking concept to implementation—of struggling through a seemingly insurmountable problem and finding my reward waiting for me on the other side; the program really works, and probably does something cool.  My one experience programming for an actual company, obtained this last summer at an internship, did not provide any of this satisfaction.  I thought I could sense a similar lack of fulfillment in the full-time employees.  This made me wonder: could it be that coding will lose its magic once I take off my student cap and put on my salaried, full-time employee cap?  Could it be that there is a better solution to the current model of software development that leaves project managers frustrated and software developers unfulfilled?  My recent reading of The Cathedral and the Bazaar has given me hope that there still exists the idea that software development should be fun, and a way has been found to keep it so.