Why is programming fun? What delights may its practitioner expect as his reward? First is the sheer joy of making things. As the child delights in his mud pie, so the adult enjoys building things, especially things of his own design. Second is the pleasure of making things that are useful to other people. Third is the fascination of fashioning complex puzzle-like objects of interlocking moving parts and watching them work in subtle cycles, playing out the consequences of principles built in from the beginning. Fourth is the joy of always learning, which springs from the non-repeating nature of the task. In one way or another the problem is ever new, and its solver learns something: sometimes practical, sometimes theoretical, and sometimes both. Finally, there is the delight of working in such a tractable medium. The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. Few media of creation are flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.
Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate from the construct itself. It prints results, draws pictures, produces sounds, moves arms. Programming then is fun because it gratifies creative longings built deep within us and delights sensibilities we have in common with all men.
编程为什么有趣？作为回报，其从业者期望得到什么样的快乐？首先是一种创建事物的纯粹快乐。如同小孩在玩泥巴时感到愉快一样，成年人喜欢创建事物，特别是自己进行设计。其次，快乐来自于开发对其他人有用的东西。第三是整个过程体现出魔术般的力量——将相互啮合的零部件组装在一起，看到它们精妙地运行，得到预先所希望的结果。第四是学习的乐趣，来自于这项工作的非重要特性。人们所面临的问题，在某个或其他方面总有些不同，因而解决问题的人可以从中学习新的事物：有时是实践上的，有时是理论上的，或者兼而有之。最后，乐趣还来自于工作在如此易于驾驭的介质上。程序员就像诗人一样，几乎仅仅工作在单纯的思考中，凭空地运用自己的想象来建造自己的"城堡" 。很少有这样的介质——创造的方式如此灵活，如此易于精炼和重建，如此容易地实现概念上的设想。
然而程序毕竟同诗歌不同，它是实实在在的东西；可以移动和运行，能独立产生可见的输出； 能打印结果，绘制图形，发出声音，移动支架。编程非常有趣，在于它不仅满足了我们内心深处进行创造的渴望，而且还愉悦了每个人内在的情感。