If you don’t already read Kathy Sierra’s Creating Passionate Users, you most probably should!
Her Valentines day post (linked above), was on “Loveocracy” and how what’s good for the user is good for you. I’d like to add something that she implied in the post, but didn’t mention specifically.
Not only do you want passionate users, but passionate developers. It seems obvious, and should go without saying, but is very important. Love the software you write. USE the software you write! In an ideal world we, as developers, could love every application we create. Unfortunately for some, especially in the case of contract development, this isn’t always the case. But whenever possible, one is blessed with working on an application that they not only enjoy developing, but using as well. When you care about something, you nurture it. In the software world, this means more creative and intuitive applications, which are ultimately well written with fewer bugs.
In the end, don’t simply create passionate users, but be one yourself.
I completely agree on this (and enjoy you blogging more—perhaps I should as well ;) )
Regarding: “Unfortunately for some, especially in the case of contract development, this isn’t always the case.”
I think even in those cases, you are a “user” of the software since the initial development is but a small part of development – you will probably be a “user” of the code for a long time as bugs, feature requests, .... happen.
In that respect I think (almost) any software project can be approached with passion. Building secure, testable, clean code is always cool. Unless you are coding in some old school crappy language!
Man you don’t even know how long I’ve waited for this since disabling my own Movable Type widget (that doesn’t work since Haloscan bypasses that code).