Crime and Punishment: When the Mind Justifies the Unjustifiable

By: Jhon Wilmer Hurtado Rivera

As programmers or IT technicians, we're trained to find logic, patterns, and structures. We like things to make sense. But there's something that even the most refined logic can't resolve: human contradiction. And that’s what Crime and Punishment is all about a book that, beyond the crime or the punishment, forces us to confront our own ideas, beliefs, and inner contradictions.

The brilliant young man who thinks he can handle everything

Raskolnikov, the protagonist, is a smart, poor, and frustrated student. In a way, he resembles any of us when we start in a new field and feel like we could do more if only the world weren't so unfair. Convinced that some people have the right to break the rules for a greater good, he commits murder thinking he can handle the consequences as if it were a thought experiment.

Sometimes in our field, or even in life, we believe that because we understand the system, we can manipulate it in our favor without human consequences and that’s a mistake.

Punishment doesn't always come from the law

The most powerful part of this novel is not the crime, but what comes after. Raskolnikov doesn't end up in jail right away. Instead, he lives in a mental prison: anxiety, guilt, paranoia. Like when you're burned out, demotivated, or stuck in a toxic routine only in his case, he dug the hole himself.

From personal experience, working long hours in front of a screen can disconnect you from your body and emotions. This book reminds us that we are not just minds. Ignoring what we feel, like Raskolnikov does, can turn us into our own worst enemies.

A modern day critique

Crime and Punishment remains brutally relevant. In an age where everything is justified from misinformation to exploitation it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that the end justifies the means. But Dostoevsky hits you with an emotional bomb: no matter how much you rationalize something, if it goes against your conscience, it will haunt you.

It also forces us to think about mental health something often overlooked in our industry. What good are all your technical skills if you can’t deal with what’s going on in your own head?

Final reflection

This book won’t teach you how to code better, but it will teach you how to live more consciously. To question yourself from within. To understand that there are no algorithms to justify harm, and no frameworks to resolve guilt. True growth as developers and as humans comes when we stop running away from ourselves.

So if you're up for it, give it a chance. Don’t rush through it. Read it like someone debugging their own soul.