2000? Csíkszentmihályi’s book (Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Experiencing Flow in Work and Play) which introduced the term flow was published in 1975.

Here’s a TED talk by Csíkszentmihályi (2004): http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.htm...

Also worth reading: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig, 1974), The Birth of Tragedy (Nietzsche, 1872)

Probably older, as "hack mode" in the Jargon File: http://people.kldp.org/~eunjea/jargon/index.php?idx=hack-mod...

Probably older as the Tao in the Tao etc.

I got a kick out of this passage:

> Everybody in Silicon Valley seems to be talking about Charlie, the gourmet cook at Google who used to work for Jerry Garcia.

In 2000, Spolsky still felt the need to make the word "Google" a hyperlink to the (then-nascent) search company's website.