Good programming is not born from mere technical competence.
You want to write good code. You want to be a good programmer. So, you care about the code:
- In any coding situation, you refuse to hack something that only seems to work. You strive to craft elegant code that is clearly correct (and has good tests to show that it is correct).
- You write code that is discoverable (that other programmers can easily pick up and understand), that is maintainable (that you, or other programmers, will be easily able to modify in the future), and that is correct (you take all steps possible to determine that you have solved the problem, not just made it look like the program works).
- You work well alongside other programmers. No programmer is an island. Few programmers work alone; most work in a team of programmers, either in a company environment or on an open source project. You consider other programmers and construct code that others can read. You want the team to write the best software possible, rather than to make yourself look clever.
- Any time you touch a piece of code, you strive to leave it better than you found it (either better structured, better tested, more understandable…).
- You care about code and about programming, so you are constantly learning new languages, idioms, and techniques. But you apply them only when appropriate.
Have fun programming.