Grokked

When it's become just a day job

My colleague the other day asked me how I determine if programmering is just a day job for someone.

I came up with there 4 traits that a programmer still enagaged in his craft would have:

• If someone mentions a new technology you’ve never heard of it, you should want to find out more.
• You should be trying to do the correct thing in whatever code you are implementing and not just trying to solve it with the hammer you’ve got in your hand.
• You should have a perspective about where programming might be going in general.
• You should be actively interested in at least one technology or computer science topic  apart from the stuff you do at work.
  

If a person has none of those 4 traits, then it’s time they found another line of work.