By using the (according to Larry Wall) First Chief Virtue of a Great Programmer: Laziness. I'm pretty lazy and my mind has the tendency to space out into thoug

By using the (according to Larry Wall) First Chief Virtue of a Great Programmer: Laziness. I'm pretty lazy and my mind has the tendency to space out into thought, so no matter what I'm doing (programming, yard work etc) I always look for ways to make it easier on me. A lot of times there isn't much to improve and you just have to keep plodding along, but sometimes you get really neat insights and ideas. For example, some time back I was working as a web developer doing applications for program managers at a large company. After a few months of doing that, it turned out a LOT of the applications they needed were very similar, so after I finished my intern work term and went back to school, I made an application that writes other applications for my 4th year design project. The idea behind it is that non-programmers can use a GUI to generate a certain class of applications automatically. Turns out that was a very good idea, since while I was writing the prototype Coghead (www.coghead.com) came out with their public beta and their software aimed to do the same thing I was doing (albeit in a different way). I could give more examples, but being lazy is generally a good source of problems. :)