Lonesome Dove

by Larry McMurtry

I started out listening to this as an audiobook but eventually switched to print, where I could read it faster. I rarely read westerns, but when I do I usually enjoy them, and some (like True Grit) are among my favorite books.

At one point (around p. 357 of my copy, in chapter 42), Call and McCrae have gone into San Antonio to try to hire a cook. They stop in at a bar where they used to be well-known, but the bartender treats them disrespectfully because they are just dirty cowboys to him. They used to be respected because they had run the Indians out of the area and made it safe for the settlers.

After they leave the bar, they have this conversation:

"Well, Call, I guess they forgot us, like they forgot the Alamo," Augustus said.

"Why wouldn't they?" Call asked. "We ain't been around."

...

"It ain't the pint, Woodrow," Augustus said. "You never did get the pint."

"Well, what is it, dern it?" Call asked.

"We'll be the Indians, if we last another twenty years," Augustus said. "The way this place is settling up it'll be nothing but churches and dry-goods stores before you know it. Next thing you know they'll have to round up us old rowdies and stick us on a reservation to keep us from scaring the ladies."

"I'd say that's unlikely," Call said.

There’s something to that. It takes rough men to settle a rough country, but once the country is settled, what happens to those men? Or what do you do with rough men born into a settled country?

I see an analogy to software development. There’s a certain type of programmer who can hack through the bush and create something new that’s really valuable. But it takes a different kind of programmer to “settle” the product, possibly even rewrite it, once it’s there producing profits. This maintainer type couldn’t have conceived of the original product or built it, but he can give it a more solid foundation and clean it up. There’s not much for the bushwhacking cowboy programmer to do at that point – the world he’s made is not made for him.

But a book about cowboy programmers would be a lot less interesting than a book about actual cowboys, I reckon.