[guylhem]

Having inspiration, whether from any ideal or from God, is what makes one burn the midnight oil, and design something out of the ordinary.

It increases not just efficiency but something else harder to define, something that could be said to be beauty. It makes the result stand out as a something special, where all the parts have a purpose and are arranged in just the right way. Read http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/djb to get a better idea of this something:

djb’s programs are some of the greatest works of beauty to be comprehended by the human mind. As with great art, the outline of the code is somehow visually pleasing — there is balance and rhythm and meter that rivals even the best typography. As with great poetry, every character counts — every single one is there because it needs to be. But these programs are not just for being seen or read — like a graceful dancer, they move! And not just as a single dancer either, but a whole choreographed number — processes splitting and moving and recombining at great speeds, around and around again.

But, unlike a dance, this movement has a purpose. They accomplish things that need accomplishing — they find your websites, they ferry your email from place to place. In the most fantastic movies, the routing and sorting of the post office is imagined as a giant endless choreographed dance number.