What does it take to be a GREAT programmer?

What does it take to be a gifted programmer?

• Im reading up on a question about if anyone can be a programmer at slashdot (http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/09/16/1631239/can-anyone-become-a-programmer). I think someone should rephrase this into -  what kind of personality traits does a hard-core programmer have that mediocre programmers don't?

• Answer:

  If you can speak English, you have the capacity to become a programmer. This concept that programming is for the gifted or highly intelligent, or can't be learned by someone with half a brain, is completely unfounded. You'll see this demonstrated in the future with the rise of teenage programmers. Our future is in computers, and being computer literate is a necessity, and so will be taught at a younger and younger age. Think about how you learned English, or how you learned physics, or chemistry, or biology, or any number of scientific disciplines, and consider the traits required to be a competent writer, or thinker. Those are the traits required to be a competent programmer. Sure, not all aspects of programming are equal. Programming a website in Ruby. for example, is much simpler than programming a banking system in Java. But these same comparisons can be made in any discipline. That's why you specialise. People don't start a career in biology with the intention of learning every single iota. They focus on a particular area like evolutionary biology. Understand that programming is little more than communicating with a computer in a *very* simplified way compared to how we communicate with fellow human beings on a daily basis. We should stop this 'programming is for geniuses' mindset, and start teaching it our children; give them skills for tomorrow. I believe this mindset is probably propagated by self-satisfied programmers stroking their egos, and the ignorant majority who don't know the difference. This isn't hard to see when you take into consideration the increasing frequency of achievements from young programmers: http://www.netmagazine.com/features/net-awards-2011-top-10-young-developers-year http://mulqueeny.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/a-very-great-week-for-young-programmers-in-the-uk/