BlackBox

This post started as a seed from interviews that we are holding for the project I’m working on for my day job (Kuali). The vast majority of the programmers that are working on this project are the cream of the crop from each institution. That isn’t to say that I’m one of those or that the rest of the programmers are not excellent, they are, but it’s a higher standard. This standard makes us that more critical when we choose new programmers that are going to come on to the project.

One of the qualities that I tend to look for (without really knowing it until recently) is passion. When someone comes in and just does the bare minimum or a little above that to get the job done it tells me that they have no passion for what they do. All of the good or excellent developers that I know all have a passion for programming. To them it isn’t just a job, it’s something they enjoy doing and they enjoy expanding their horizons, not because it is a part of their job, but because they truly enjoy it.

I think that this passion extends further than just this though, most of the good programmers that I know are passionate about other things and aren’t afraid to share their passion with other people. This of course can lead to either a healthy discourse or heated debate in the office or elsewhere ;-), this is what happens when you get passionate people together. Of course one of the tricks of a truly good developer is to know when to put your passion (and your ego) on the shelf for the betterment of the project or task at hand.

Further along this line of thinking lies creativity, in his piece ”Hackers and Painters”, Paul Graham describes the commonality between hackers and painters

What hackers and painters have in common is that they’re both makers. Along with composers, architects, and writers, what hackers and painters are trying to do is make good things. They’re not doing research per se, though if in the course of trying to make good things they discover some new technique, so much the better.

And honestly I couldn’t have said it better myself, but I’ll elaborate on this idea a little further based on my personal experience. Every really good programmer that I’ve met has had some other creative bent, most of them have been musicians of one form or another, or they have really been into photography, painting, etc. I think that this derives from the desire to create, to make. One of the reasons why I like programming is because I like to make stuff, for me this has also extended to music, film, and writing (in fact I started out writing fiction way back in grade school). But it is the act of making, the act of getting something to work that fascinates me still. Whenever I hear a problem that needs a solution my mind immediately shifts into “maker” mode and I start thinking about how I could so do that - if only there were like 20 of me all of the cool ideas I’d ever had would be done ;-).

This all leads back to passion, if you are truly passionate about what you do then you will do better at it, it really is that simple. But that doesn’t mean that that is where your passion has to end, I would say that if you are currently playing around with the idea of learning how to draw, or learn how to play an instrument, do it, don’t wait.