The Best Programmer in the World is the One Having the Most Fun
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Last week (about 22 years later) I programmed a new generator for scannerless context free parsing which takes layout into account, using my own special variant of Earley parsing. And I had a lot of fun!
The best programmer I know in person agonizes over his approaches until it satisfies his high level of standard. He is a professional, not an amateur who does his work for fun. Does he have fun when he works? Yes, sometimes, but not all the time.
Lowe by the way was a fascinating character who, in addition to being one of the worlds top athletes, studied mathematics and would reportedly bring math text books on expeditions to keep himself entertained.
This is particularly true when we're talking about a subject that's notoriously tricky to measure (programmer productivity) and subjective (what the hell makes for a good programmer anyway?).
At the end of the day, there's only so much usable data to work with, and you can't blame people for making decisions on limited data. That said, if you know of any data that disproves his point, I'd love to see it.
Oh, not like that? Sorry...
"Write helpful comments, you must"
This isn't just pedantry; I've known a lot of programmers that absolutely loved their work but wrote code that was mediocre or worse, or wrote decent code but couldn't structure a project to save their lives.
"I have so much fun doing this" doesn't immediately imply "I know or seek to know all of the intricacies of this subject."
This is true of me too, a lot of times I have fun writing something already done, although it is kind of a sad waste.
IME, that's not even close to being true. Sure, there are programmers that really care about their craft, just as there are people that care about their craft in every profession, but I've never seen any evidence that programmers in general have more than the average degree of drive to find ways to be the best.
IME, professions where the average professional doesn't make very much and/or where the opportunities to make lots of money in the profession tend to come with a fairly short time clock tend to be the most driven -- athletic professions (not just the sports where the "big leagues" are well known like football, etc., but things like dance as well) are very much like this. Programmers in general, not so much.
Quite possibly people drawn to the startup world (whether its software startups or biotech startups) are more likely concerned than average about being the best -- that certainly seems consistent with my experience -- but that's different than the particular profession.
Programming is only widely open and publicized via the internet, it's natural for people with computers to have a greater presence on the internet.
However if you talk to someone that practices a craft,like carpentry or brewing, you will find a similar drive and passion to learn the techniques, soft skills, and hard skills that are required to be great. It's really about craftsmanship, not about software.
I'm not sure about other professions, but people that actually don't like programming and works with it, quits very soon. I don't saw people with 5+ years of experience that don't love doing it.
I think part of the reason this thread is generating "programmers are different" comments is that it's easy to believe you're different when yours is the only field you know intimately from the inside (wow, that came out wrong).