Zed shaw talks at length about (roughly) this kind of thing in his talk "The ACL is Dead". Tbe video is at: http://blog.cusec.net/2009/01/05/zed-shaw-the-acl-i

Zed shaw talks at length about (roughly) this kind of thing in his talk "The ACL is Dead". Tbe video is at: http://blog.cusec.net/2009/01/05/zed-shaw-the-acl-is-dead-cusec-2008/ http://blog.cusec.net/2009/01/05/zed-shaw-the-acl-is-dead-cu... And there are summaries in the comments here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=420650 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=420650 I wrote a few internal tools to automate various bits of drudgery at my last workplace. Nobody important wanted to know, but I and many other developers were saved hours of mindless work a week, and that makes me happy. Had I re-written one of our actual products, the important people would have cared - but not in a positive way - and the developers wouldn't have cared.