Although written mainly in the context of software development, he concludes with a more general section on management, where he makes this observation:

Two and a half years after the first version of this essay, the most radical thought I can offer to close with is no longer a vision of an open-source dominated software world; that, after all, looks plausible to a lot of sober people in suits these days.

Rather, I want to suggest what may be a wider lesson about software, (and probably about every kind of creative or professional work). Human beings generally take pleasure in a task when it falls in a sort of optimal-challenge zone; not so easy as to be boring, not too hard to achieve. A happy programmer is one who is neither underutilized nor weighed down with ill-formulated goals and stressful process friction. Enjoyment predicts efficiency.

Relating to your own work process with fear and loathing (even in the displaced, ironic way suggested by hanging up Dilbert cartoons) should therefore be regarded in itself as a sign that the process has failed. Joy, humor, and playfulness are indeed assets; it was not mainly for the alliteration that I wrote of “happy hordes” above, and it is no mere joke that the Linux mascot is a cuddly, neotenous penguin.

It may well turn out that one of the most important effects of open source’s success will be to teach us that play is the most economically efficient mode of creative work.

Not sure how and where to categorise this commment, but thought you might like the kind of quirky block diagram on specialists and generalists which I found in the “CommunicationNation” blog and which I have reproduced in my blog. I also like the metaphor for thinking and thinkers, borrowed from the classics, of “the hedgehog and the fox”, hence the title of the post.

There are so many labels to describe the great feeling of freedom to innovate and do well by the kids in those classrooms; each one, I guess, helps a different mindset of person ‘get’ the idea.