One thing I learned early in my programming career is that some people can program, as in writing original logic, but many employed programmers found programmin

One thing I learned early in my programming career is that some people can program, as in writing original logic, but many employed programmers found programming to be too tedious or emotionally exhausting. For the later group the most common output of work was writing configurations. Programming logic defines a job but configurations merely describe what to do with existing jobs. The distinction is monumental. Almost always the tool junkies were configuration people. Almost always the people who could program tended to avoid configuration madness as much as possible or would write scripts to dynamically manage the configuration madness for them. The most counter-intuitive thing about this is that you really don't have to be smart to be a programmer. You just have to be willing to solve problems. You can call that adversity, grit, or perseverance. While higher intelligence is certainly helpful it is not the defining characteristic. I suppose its similar to consciousnesses, which is negatively correlated to intelligence and yet still required in exceptionally high doses to operating at the top of any profession.