I've hired and worked with hundreds of programmers, most good. The observations in the post are all true, but another correlate I've seen is patience: willingness to slog through difficult, boring work to achieve a great outcome.
All of the very best programmers I know work incredibly hard and never allow a massive boring task to derail them. It's an interesting combination of confidence ("I can solve this insanely hard problem") and humility ("I am not above doing this crappy work").
Sometimes the solution is to automate the boring stuff; other times it's literally just getting through days of grunt work. The very best programmers I know are willing to do both, and know when to do which.
All of the very best programmers I know work incredibly hard and never allow a massive boring task to derail them. It's an interesting combination of confidence ("I can solve this insanely hard problem") and humility ("I am not above doing this crappy work").
Sometimes the solution is to automate the boring stuff; other times it's literally just getting through days of grunt work. The very best programmers I know are willing to do both, and know when to do which.