I've been familiar with the concept of egoless programming [1] since early in my career (mid 80's). I was drawn to it because I was also attracted to Eastern ph

I've been familiar with the concept of egoless programming [1] since early in my career (mid 80's). I was drawn to it because I was also attracted to Eastern philosophies about minimizing your ego and identity to be more aware and in the moment (mediation, mindfulness). There was another idea that I was drawn to at the same time "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [2]. Egoless programming and flow became linked for me. I think for this reason I've always had trouble with 9 > 9 Don’t be “the coder in the corner.” I understand the spirit of it, but I'm sure you can think of great programs written by one person. We had an example of that on the front page of HN yesterday, "Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch" [3]. I'm currently learning Elm and that project has also had issues because the lone creator maintains tight control and doesn't handle feedback the way people would like him to, "Why I'm leaving Elm" [4]. So while I think Gerald Weinberg's book "The Psychology of Computer Programming" [5] is really great for interacting with your team (don't personalize, don't get defensive, or worse, offensive) you still need some ego to interact with people. To me "Egoless programming" is more about getting yourself out of the way when coding, much like a basketball player loses him or herself in the game. If while I'm writing code, in the back of my mind I'm thinking "Oh, this is dumb, people are going to criticize this", like I have a backseat driver, then that's ego getting in the way. The flow idea is to get your ego out of the way. That's the best egoless programming. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egoless_programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egoless_programming [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66354.Flow https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66354.Flow [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29950740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29950740 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22821447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22821447 [5] https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Psychology_of_Computer_Programming/76dIAAAAMAAJ?hl=en https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Psychology_of_Compu...