We are a small software team working on some really important problems in the solar/renewable and home energy efficiency space. Come join us if you want to change the world one roof at a time. Email me if you are interested.
I love 1984. I wouldn't say it was inspiring (its dystopian) but rather an eye-opening experience. It made me change the way I look at security and privacy.
I think the "other ways" might not always be horrible ideas. It just leads to messy, unreadable code. Of course, its upto the programmer to write readable code.