Note that I'm not "knocking" psychedelics per se. I've never personally tried them and I don't know enough to comment on their effects or risks. I'm just providing an anecdotal counterpoint to yours.
There are a lot of general comments in this thread about people's minds being usefully expanded by drug use. I'm not disputing these, but could someone perhaps provide a specific example about a problem they were stuck on which they then managed to solve with the assistance of drugs?
Ahem. That was a joke. But in seriousness, I've also never heard a specific example of a programming problem solved during a trip, but I can say that I've found tripping to be very beneficial in some unexpected areas:
1. Holistic understanding feels easier. E.g. understanding other people on a much deeper holistic level. I'm usually not very great at group socializing in parties or whatnot but tripping actually helps with that a lot. This is, in my mind, the same kind of "systems understanding" that could be applied to programming. You can intuitively understand a complex system of subtle interactions, on a deeper level than just what's being said.
2. Visualization. Almost anything can be visualized, even if it doesn't really make sense. And the visualizations feel real, which makes them easier to move and comprehend. Sometimes you can literally see them, like in the patterns of the veins on your hand, or the stitching in your clothes.
3. Unexpected mutation. During a trip, things can often move in a weird way, including things that don't normally move, like concepts or diagrams (or walls -- just try not to stare at them too long). It's notoriously challenging to rotate, skew, or otherwise transform your mental visuals. Tripping can make this trivial.
4. Perceived reality. The difference between real and virtual completely fades. Video games feel real (which is awesome when it's not terrifying). Have you ever played an FPS where you are literally afraid to die? It actually makes you a lot better! This same perceptive shift collapses the difference between real/virtual, digital/analog (in the nontechnical sense), practical/theoretical. It collapses inside/outside as well. You are not separate from what you are doing or thinking about; you're part of the system, like you're literally contained within the conceptual structure. This kind of dichotomy-destroying mindset opens up some very interesting new perspectives.
Compilers are generally considered very complex programs, and the "mind expanding" properties of psychedelics helped him for laying out the high level design (he did not do the actual coding while under the influence).
Francis Crick is also known to have experimented with LSD when discovering the double helix structure of DNA.
Really, we can play arm-chair neuroscientist indefinitely, but there is only one way to get to the bottom of this. We must gather more, um, data.
I think cultivating this as an attitude is usually a good thing (in life) and can lead to powerful insights. In fact this is a really cheap way to innovate. Take concepts from one domain, cast them onto another, profit. A cross disciplinary culture helps a lot. I'm sure many people here understand very well what I mean.
So to answer you more precisely, I really have only one data-point and I think both the traits you describe and psychedelics can make interesting (if not better) engineers.