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There's a common expectation when looking for great developers that they need to be "passionate" about coding, which is often equated to coding long hours. "It's half past midnight, passion"
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It helps to be able to be passionate about it sometimes. It's great to get into a state of flow where you're able to turn thoughts into code effortlessly.
Passion tends to let you down when things get difficult, though. Some of the best developers I've worked with weren't particularly passionate most of the time; they were stone cold professionals who were able to buckle down and power through the grunt work...which involved, more often than not, fixing other people's bugs.
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I've worked with both passionate and passionless developers. The passionless developers viewed development as purely a career. They worked 9 - 5 and didn't make much (if any) effort to keep up to date with current technology as it didn't interest them. If you want a developer who's sole purpose is to fix bugs then they are probably ideal.
A passionate developer will (sometimes) work longer hours (though that's not always a defining quality) and make an effort to keep their skills up to date as they are genuinely enthused and excited by technology and current trends. They are better suited to working on more innovative / green fields projects as they will need to research the area to come up with appropriate solutions.
If you want someone who will churn out bug fixes then passion is not necessarily required. If you want to innovate in a new or emerging technology then you probably want someone who is passionate.
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare
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I think there's a difference between passionless and apathetic.
Yes, I've worked with people who haven't been bothered to update their skill-sets since the days of VB6 but I'd put that down to lack of professionalism rather than a lack of passion.
There are many of us who do enjoy what we do and do take an active interest in new developments but would never describe ourselves as being passionate about code. It's what we do when we're working and we like to do it well but we're not going to be up all night contemplating the inner-mysteries of some database engine or other.
Passion, to me, implies a lack of detachment and as den suggests, passionate developers can often become somewhat one-eyed and evangelical, frequently over-committing to particular concepts or ideas.
To my mind, the best developers tend to be somewhat dispassionate. Open-mindedness and pragmatism are probably the best qualities that someone can bring to the table.
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PeejayAdams wrote: Passion, to me, implies a lack of detachment and as den suggests, passionate developers can often become somewhat one-eyed and evangelical, frequently over-committing to particular concepts or ideas
I think a fixation on a particular technology and passion are independent components. Maybe what you and the author are conflating is passion "for a particular technology" versus "passion for technology in general".
When you are passionate about a single technology, then this may certainly cloud your judgement leading to a single-minded approach to your work. However, when you are passionate about technology in general, then this is a far healthier approach.
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare
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I take your point that passions can be broad but I still think that technology can be part of a balanced diet.
A developer's job is broader than the technology that drives it - it's about business, communication, requirement gathering, documentation, collaboration, mentoring, internal politics and all sorts of things. Yes, the tech aspect is obviously important but I'm just as likely to take an issue pertaining to one of those other elements home with me as a technical issue.
Is it possible to be passionate about one aspect of your job (albeit a major one) without it having a detrimental effect on the other aspects of it?
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Some of us are sensible enough to put our family life as a priority too. That is indicative of a better work-life balance. I spend some free time keeping up to date with technology, but am limited in how much this is possible.
Too many tech companies seem to assume that you have nothing better to do than work all possible hours. That's a good way to burn people out and can actually be viewed as abusive. I finally got round to addressing this when one particularly extended stressful period resulted in so much stress I started to hallucinate.
Simply put, if the only way you can keep on top in a project is to work ridiculous hours, the project is being horribly mismanaged.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."
Alan Kay.
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Passionate developers often tend to strongly attach themselves to some kind of language / platform / library / OS / coding style to the point of being unable to work under different circumstances or taking personally any change to what they did or tought. Not to talk about flame wars and religion wars...
Of course some amount of passion is needed, developing is partly a creative job, but it is also a technical science - there passion is less important than the right frame of mind and knowledge.
BTW: most these half-baked frameworks and tens of new languages doomed to die horribly in months are created by "passionate developers" for "passionate developers". Also jumping from a technology to another without rationality is a common trait of the so-called passionate developers, while in many scenarios it would be preferred a more rational, non-emotive mindset and solid grounding in pure engineering skills.
A good developer can work 9-to-5 and be as productive or more productive than a extremely passionate developer working 18 hrs a day.
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
When I was six, there were no ones and zeroes - only zeroes. And not all of them worked. -- Ravi Bhavnani
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den2k88 wrote:
A good developer can work 9-to-5 and be as productive or more productive than a extremely passionate developer working 18 hrs a day.
In other words, a good developer is more productive than one who's sh*t.
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I prefer stronger words, such as "driven", "determined", and "tenacious".
"Passion" sounds like you should be leaping around in a field of flowers, petting unicorns, or trying on a pretty new spring dress.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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or the proverbial sword and mounds of flesh...
#SupportHeForShe
Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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imho: to frame the question of what programmer "greatness" is in terms of "passion," is to bootleg a confusion of productivity (a sine qua non) and temperament.
«There is a spectrum, from "clearly desirable behaviour," to "possibly dodgy behavior that still makes some sense," to "clearly undesirable behavior." We try to make the latter into warnings or, better, errors. But stuff that is in the middle category you don’t want to restrict unless there is a clear way to work around it.» Eric Lippert, May 14, 2008
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I prefer developers who can turn the passion on and off at will.
When I'm coding, I flip the switch and become passionate about the language & platform I'm working in. That massively helps me achieve flow.
When I'm early in a project doing tech evaluations before any real coding has started, I flip it off and become cold and dispassionate about tech in general. That helps me make rapid decisions about cutting and running when a tech starts to smell.
It has side effects, though. When I'm in cold mode (like I am right now in my current project), I find that I have zero drive to work on personal projects at home. None of my github repos have been touched in 2 months+. When I'm in hot mode, my social life suffers (even more than usual) and I essentially become a hermit.
Looks like this project will have bad timing. I'll be getting into the coding portion just as the holidays start. Which means I'll be in passionate/hot/all-I-want-is-to-code mode when I have to go spend time with other people. Ew. 
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All the author had to do was write: "Being passionate does not mean you have to work long hours." Instead he redefined the word "passionate" in the most negative way possible and then proceeded to give examples supporting the common definition in this context (versus the sexual context, which would just be weird.)
For those who are curious, this [article] is an excellent example of a "straw man argument."
modified 2-Sep-16 23:01pm.
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Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner! 
TTFN - Kent
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I consider myself to be a passionate developer. That means spending a lot of up front time thinking about the problem before I code it, so that I minimize the long coding hours, because there are a lot of things I'd rather be doing.
I also think a lot about the process. Recently, I wrote a silly little app that pre-populated the JS and HTML stubs of Backbone pages with a few critical values I filled in and registering the pages in the Django/Backbone page init section, because doing that manually for the 20 pages I had to add was such a PITA, not to mention error prone.
And yeah, I looked around for utilities that did that, found a few that were unwieldy behemoths, when I what I basically needed was:
- read in the whole file.
- do a recursive string replace of tokenized values in the template.
- write it out with the indicated filename
- update the init.py file.
(But of course I wrote it in C#, hahaha)
Marc
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Downturn in August smaller than expected; may signal start of enterprise migrations. Everyone didn't revert to using Vista?
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Revert ? I'm Still using it. 
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Microsoft's browsers continued to hemorrhage users last month, with no sign that the bleeding will stop. "You're gonna miss me when I'm gone"
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Perhaps if they allowed the toolbar to be customized.
(And at least made the logo/icon entirely different. That is was remarkably unstable until recently didn't help any. It's almost like Microsoft management doesn't know what they're doing.)
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Starting today from $7 per user/per month, businesses of any size can purchase Windows 10 Enterprise E3 through the CSP program and take advantage of enterprise-grade security and management functionality. "Feedback from customers and partners is at the core of how we build Windows.", ah, they crack me up
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Kent Sharkey wrote: "Feedback from customers and partners is at the core of how we build Windows.", ah, they crack me up
If by "feedback" you mean things customers say that we agree with.
(No snark. Unfortunately, Apple, Google and Linux are worse.)
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