A Good Programmer?

I came across this blog post via Hacker News tonight, and it gave me a little food for thought.

I should know better, of course, than to just take stuff like this as gospel truth, but I hear it a lot from people like Jeff Atwood, who make their living talking about programming. To be a "good" programmer you need to be the kind of person who just loves it, and does it all the time.

The second one I don't know that I agreed with too much, mostly because I know plenty of people who talk up "bleeding-edge" technologies who are only talking them up because they're bleeding-edge, and couldn't even begin to actually program in it if they wanted to because they lack even the most basic skills. This is primarily what I run into with kids singing the praises of the latest Microsoft technology (not to piss on Microsoft technology necessarily, but there's a reason for that). However, taken with the rest of the list, it's a little more understandable. I'll still hold on to my dreams of kernel hacking, though. ;)

The one that really hit me in a tender area was the last one..."If your potential programmer didn’t do any programming before university, and all his experience starts when she got her first job, she’s probably not a good programmer." Ouch. That describes me almost to a T. Granted, I started programming in my undergrad career while pursing another degree, and the Master's was technically an extension of a "hobby", but before that I had never done any programming. In CS 120 I had to go to my professor's office for help because I didn't know what FTP was. Yes, it was that bad.

I had no access to any resources to even begin to understand how to do it, and didn't know what to look for anyway. It has been the primary source of my low self-confidence in my programming ability the entire time I have been attempting to make the computer bend to my feeble will. Even now, when I know I've improved so much, I still never feel like I've worked hard enough or dedicated myself enough to improving my skill. I've tinkered with a wide variety of languages but am still very much a C++/Java person.

Anyway, expressing my insecurity is not particularly helpful...I'm off to start reading more books and working on more projects.