Top 5 Attributes of Highly Effective Programmers by Ben Watson

I picked out a few of my favorite quotes, but you should go and read the whole thing.

Humility

Humility is first because it implies all the other attributes, or at least enables them.

Simply put, humility is an understanding that the world doesn’t begin and end with you. It’s accepting that you don’t know everything there is to know about WPF, or Perl, or Linux. It’s an acknowledgment of the fact that, even if you’re an expert in some particular area, there is still much to learn. In fact, there is far more to learn than you could possibly do in a lifetime, and that’s ok.

Love of Learning

If you’re new to this whole programming thing, I hate to break it to you: school has just begun.

This means reading. A lot. If you don’t like reading, I suggest you start–get into Harry Potter, fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, whatever. Something. Just read. Then get some technical books. Start with my list of essential developer books. They’re not as exciting as Harry Potter, but they’re not bad either.

Detail-orientedness

Another aspect of paying attention to details is critical thinking. Critical thinking implies a healthy skepticism about everything you do. It is particularly important as you examine the details of your implementation, designs, or plans. It’s the ability to pull out of those details what is important, what is correct, or on the other hand, what is garbage and should be thrown out. It also guides when you should use well-known methods of development, and when you need to come up with a novel solution to a hard problem.

Adaptability

Change happens. Get used to it. This is a hard one for me, to tell the truth. I really, really like having a plan and following it, adapting it to my needs, not those of others.

The fact is, in software development, the project you end up writing will not be the one you started. This can be frustrating if you don’t know how to handle it.

Passion

There’s a world of difference between someone who just programs and someone who loves to program. Someone who just programs will probably not be familiar with the latest tools, practices, techniques, or technologies making their way down the pipeline. They won’t think about programming outside of business hours. On the weekends, they do their best to forget about computers. They have no personal projects, no favorite technologies, no blogs they like to read, and no drive to excel. They have a hard time learning new things and can be a large burden on an effective development team.

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