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The Three Virtues

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The three virtues of a programmer, according to Perl creator Larry Wall:

The Three Virtues of a GREAT Programmer

Laziness

The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful and document what you wrote so you don’t have to answer so many questions about it.

Impatience

The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don’t just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to.

Hubris

The quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won’t want to say bad things about.