This book written by Christopher Alexander some 30 years ago has a priori nothing to do with programming. Through the book he explains his vision of patterns in architecture, how to give certain qualities to buildings; how to make them (and us) feel alive, whole.. beautiful... or 'have' as he puts it: the quality without a name.

Beauty, purpose, life and wholesomeness are some of the qualities that we, as programmers, also strive to achieve when we are coding.

I must say that the author makes some very interesting points that can be applied to many areas of your life!

A wonderful book to appreciate and to read again and again! 

Here's a link:
http://www.amazon.com/Timeless-Way-Building-Christopher-Alexander/dp/0195024028

I had this thought while reading some old really badly structured code at work today:

Programming is not only about achieving a particular functionality or set of functionalities…

Programming is about purpose. The purpose is what you are trying to communicate to the users, the testers, the other programmers, or even yourself. The purpose should be reflected by the end result, the methodology you use and the code you leave behind for other programmers to (hopefully) marvel at..

If you understand what and why you are programming, your code will be easy to read, understand and modify.