From Ben Watson’s great essay, “Top 5 Attributes of Highly Effective Programmers”: 

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.  

This describes so many of the programmers I’ve been subjected to over the years. Read more at the Philosophical Geek.

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