Advice to Aimless, Excited Programmers (2010)
Good advice to advance your career, but I'd say there's nothing wrong with being passionate/excited about the craft and not the result. Newbies should just be aware that this can affect their career (they will have better job security as they won't be picky about the domain, but they will probably earn less as they won't ever be domain experts).<p>There are endless examples from other "industries".
There are people that love painting, but never care who sees their work. They love the creative process.
There are people that love carpentry, but hate doing utilitarian furniture that sells well. They love how zen manual labor can be and that the result is physical.<p>It's not "wrong-way-aroundness", it's just a different goal.