What makes a good programmer.

Having been working as a computer programmer for the past 5 years, I have some thoughts about what makes a good programmer.

1>design patterns

I think it's the far most important one, the life of the software depends on how easy you can maintain the software, how easy you can add a new feature, how easy you can modify an existing feature. Every programmer can write some codes, but the difference is how they organize the codes. The seasoned programmer always bears in mind how s/he can maintain it when s/he implements some codes.

2>Language Features

Familiarity of the languages, including the libraries associated with the particular languages. There are a lot of languages available, C#, C++, Java..., and nobody could be very familiar with each of them, just as nobody could speak every language in the world. But a good programmer has to be very familiar with one or two languages s/he uses in day to day work. Efficiency also comes from this, if you know the language feature well, it's easier for you write clean code.

I often read code I wrote when I just started to work 5 years ago, and I feel it's ugly, and a lot of them are NOT very sophisticated. Sometimes, an experienced programmer can write two lines of codes which an inexperienced programmer may need write more than 10 lines of code.

3> Algorithms

That's the part I missed all. In day to day work, a lot of focuses are on RAD (Rapid Application Development). Most of time, you don't have to think about too much on the underlying algorithm, you'll just find some data structures in the library, rarely you'll have to write something really serious. This kind of work will make smart people dumb because they don't get chance to think deeply.

4> Resource Handling

Computer is a shared resource. The computer your program is running also includes a lot of other programs. It means, if you want to use certain resources , you are borrowing some resource from the computer, after using it, you want to give it back to the computer. If you don't , it means other people won't be able to use it.

The situation has been improved steadily with new technologies or research efforts underway. If you work in a managed world like C# or Java, you have less worry since GC did a lot of work for you. But still, there are a lot of resource the GC won't handle for you automatically, or in other word, you cannot rely on GC to take care for you.

5> Tools

Making good use of the tools. I know some geeks like to program in notepad, and open a command window to do everything. I admire those people since it reflects that those people really understand what's under the hood. And a lot of times, they can do thing more efficiency.

For me, like most other people, I like powerful IDEs like VS.Net and Eclipse, even though I don't have much experience in the latter one. Jon Skeet has a very good post about those two IDEs. I always try not to rely more on shortcuts instead of the mouse in developing. I feel it can improve efficiency much.

By meaning tools, I also mean those sdk tools, and a lot of third party add-ons. James Avery has a MSDN article about ten VS.Net essential tools. By making full use of those tools, you can really show a difference with those co-workers who don't use those tools.