I’ve recently finished reading all of Steve Yegge’s blog-rants. The overarching theme is Steve searching for ways to do better at software development. For instance, Being the Averagest on why many programmers aren’t trying to get better, and Practicing Programming on how to get better for those who listened and decided they want to try. He also chronicles his search for a better programming language. I suggest reading all of the essays; hopefully they’ll inspire you to be a better programmer, and you can take advantage of the work “Stevey” has done to guide you down the path of improvement. Stevey wrote all these articles while working at Amazon; make sure to also check out his current blog now that he works at Google.