How to become a good programmer

Being a programmer isn't very easy. Of course learning one programming language is easy, but mastering it real good takes a lot of time and lot of problems to solve in that specific language. Learning next language if it is in the same paradigm is easier than the first one and so on.

If somebody is intelligent enough he or she could learn any new technology and any new language. It only takes time. I don't say that finding free time when you're working and / or studying at the same time is easy, but in our job we must learn at all the time. Languages, frameworks and patterns are evolving still.

If it comes to design patterns here it's identical situation - the only thing that matters is using them in practice. Only when we are doing something we encounter real life problems and we can solve them. Year by year problems to solve are much harder and harder. People are still searching solutions for the more difficult ones.

People say that good developer is when he tend to stay in deadlines. But in my opinion being a good programmer is being curious of how it's done inside in application. Because only if we knew what will be in memory and what computer must do if we do A or if we do B we can write effective applications. I know that when it comes to business time is very important, but for the cost of doing something well.

I've worked in company (I will not say name) in which everything was done in two ways:
- as fast as we can but doing dirty code
- as long as we could reapairing this dirty code made earlier
After some time I've noticed that 90% of programmers time can be spared bo doing something well once. So doing something well should be our goal from the start.

Todays languages are making programming lot easier - we don't need to worry about memory consuming and heavy weight of application. People will buy faster machines and / or client will buy bigger server - it's just not our problem they say.

Computer games today are being made using graphic tools and only a few scripts (of course there are some exceptions). If we look at demoscene we could find really cool graphics and really cool stuff which will run faster and look much better than games we can buy.

The difference is huge - the demos are from 4KB to 64 KB size only. And they look very nice and produce the best graphics possible at good performance - how could that happen? Because these small apps weren't done in stress of time and money - they were done by people who really enjoys what they are doing.

So in my opinion we should do something interesting for us or quit and find another job. Because only if we are doing something which is fun for us we would do it with enough passion and curiosity needed to do it well.