A Programming Hierarchy of Needs

After I wrote my last post - There's More to Software Design I was thinking about why so many programmers don't concern themselves with issues like style, grace, and elegance.

It occurred to me that part of the explanation might be something like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Maslow theorized that people have a hierarchy of needs and that higher levels only come into play after lower levels are satisfied. The lower levels are things like food and shelter; the higher levels are things like morality and creativity. e.g. oversimplifying, starving people don't worry as much about morality

The analogy is probably obvious. The lower level of programming needs would be to get the code to [appear to] work. The inserted "appear to" is important. Without it, "getting the code to work" could be everything up to and including formal verification. Whereas I'm talking about most novice programmer's concept of "getting it working" which is to pass a few random tests.

Things like automated tests, test driven development, and refactoring would be higher up the hierarchy. (Or the equivalent from your methodology of choice.) And things like style, grace, and elegance would be near the top.

And the reason most programmers don't get to the top levels is that they're still struggling with the lower levels. That's not really their fault, either. Programming is unquestionably hard. Just to get something to work in the weak sense can be more than enough challenge.

Note: Just because I think about the higher levels doesn't mean I'm more "advanced". I'm still struggling along at the lower levels with my own code. I just like to dream :-)