I have always thought about the amount of work and insight it would take to become a decent programmer. Usually I begin to shudder at the thought of spending hours cranking out code on my computer. Maybe a lot of coffee and Paul Kalkbrenner can keep me going on Excel, but I don’t think that formula applies for programming.

So what type of person really enjoys coding away for hours?

From time to time I find stories in the news which fascinate me. They are often not pertinent to the daily grind of the financial community. Life is so much bigger than what we do for our daily bread, that it is hard to get excited about a basis point spike or derailed merger. That said, some of these impertinent stories really get me thinking about the way business is done on Wall Street.

One such story is the seeming pop culture fodder of Mark Zuckerberg’s new diet. For those who are not up to speed, the Facebook founder has decided to only eat animals which he personally kills. This in turn leads to a lot of vegetable eating for Zuck, but my musings on the subject are not the least bit dietary.

What I am wondering is.. does Wall Street really it what it kills?

As many of you know, Goldman Sachs recently invested $500 million in Facebook at a $50 billion valuation. Goldman is also reportedly raising $1.5 billion from those special, lucky investors in a special-purpose vehicle that will invest alongside the firm. It's gonna be super special. All kidding aside, this is kind of a BFD. Speculation has been swirling for years around if and when Zuckerberg would take the social networking behemoth public. As you probably know, Zuckerberg has largely resisted, saying time and time again that he had no near-term plans for an IPO and would be taking his sweet time about going public, thank you very much ... and that you can go back to obsessively checking status updates for all he cares. (The Onion, as per usual, pegs The Zuck perfectly.)

Thus, when Goldman poured millions in this week, many in the press were seemingly elated, as its investment would give elite investors the opportunity to invest in Facebook stock and was therefore a clever little private IPO indeed that would save Facebook from having to ACTUALLY go public. Not so fast, Zuckerblurg. It seems an arcane securities law requires a company with over 499 shareholders to begin disclosing financial information -- which is typically followed shortly thereafter by a full-scale IPO. Considering that Facebook has said their number of shareholders will break 500 by the end of the year, it looks like the Goldman deal will force Zuckerberg's hand after all, likely pushing Facebook to an IPO by April of 2012.

Ahhh, Facebook. Perhaps the biggest thing ever made since sliced bread. I’m on it, you’re on it, we’re all on it.

With over half a billion active users worldwide, it’s become more popular than porn and has a lifted an awkward, freckled, little nerd (obvious envy seeping) to the Forbes list, with a net worth of $ 6.9 billion last year.

Not to mention TIME’s Man of the year.

With Goldman’s private offering valuing Facebook at $50 billion, they pretty much doubled his net worth and assures a future IPO.

But is Facebook really worth $50 billion to you?