Personality of Software Developers
A couple of days ago, a friend of mine, Jo Stichbury, the author of Symbian OS Explained book, sent me a link to an interesting post from Rob Wailing, Personality of the Best Software Developers.
Rob highlighted that most of phenomenal developers share a handful of personality traits. What are they?
Pessimistic
…The best developers anticipate headaches that other developers never think of, and do everything within their power to avoid them….
Angered by Sloppy Code
…The worst nightmare for a great developer is to see someone else’s software gasping for air while bringing the rest of the system to its knees…
Long Term Life Planners
…The best developers I know have stable family lives, save for retirement, own their own home, and eat an apple a day (ok, maybe not that last one)….
Attention to Detail
…I have never, ever, ever seen a great software developer who does not have amazing attention to detail…
I am not an expert in psychology or a phenomenal developer, but I have a feeling that most (if not all) of his points are right.
Rob has another interesting example of his colleague who forced anyone to indent using two spaces instead of tabs. Guess, what did he do when he found code with tabs? He replaced them with two spaces line-by-line! I can only smile reading it because I do the same thing too.
What do you think? You can read the full article here (the comments are even more interesting… :))