[Xurinos]

Am I the only one who feels like commentary that categorizes "good" and "bad" programmers is unhelpful? One can make a good case for somebody having more appreciable traits than another, but I would be loathe to call either "good" or "bad", even in comparison to each other. This kind of labeling is just namecalling, more harmful than helpful, a stroking of egos.

The reality is that different people have varying strengths and weaknesses for specific tasks; people have different rates of personal development in different areas. It is not a matter of "good programmer" vs "bad programmer"; it is a matter of "That person can do that task in a better way than I can" or "That person can do that task more efficiently than I can" by some perceived measure of "better" and "efficient". The comparisons between people are relative, not absolute, and divided across many kinds of traits.

However, this article does bring up a number of traits that many of us can probably agree with as "goals to achieve in personal development". For that, it has great conversation value. Personally, I like the notion that memory might be correlated to some quality of design and output.

If I were to pick a trait of importance for a programmer, it would be "Consistently improves bottom line growth." Things that factor into that might be "Writes maintainable code" and "Knows his tools well", but it is debatable that these subtraits have a clear correlation with "bottom line growth". Has anyone actually measured these things?

[gfosco]

The most important trait for me would be Passion.