Not sure if I'd call myself successful but I do get paid to program as a Data Scientist (so not a real programmer). 1) No it wasnt CS or math education. I was

Not sure if I'd call myself successful but I do get paid to program as a Data Scientist (so not a real programmer). 1) No it wasnt CS or math education. I was trained as an EE and was expected to program in C and Assembly for my assignments. We were just expected to pick it up without much formal help (circa 1999). 2) I feel this aspect is required for any endeavor. 3) This should be true in theory, but very much depends on your team and size of the company. If you work for a small sized company, you can create a whole system and learn a lot. Working for a BiG Co, you'll just do a tiny fraction of the whole system and your learning may be limited. 4) Curiosity. When I first learnt programming, I remember using programming to "verify" what I was learning in EE classes. I realize now it was silly to "verify" if Newtons method or Fourier Transforms "work", but at the time it tremendously aided my understanding of translating textbook concepts into code. This aspect has stuck with me. Later when I moved to Data Science, I returned frequently to this method of reproducing basics using my own code. I feel it has indeed made me more effective in my job.