To some degree. Or, perhaps, consider it in reverse. If you don't have passion, if you don't care about the software, if it's just a 9-to-5 job to you, how li

To some degree. Or, perhaps, consider it in reverse. If you don't have passion, if you don't care about the software, if it's just a 9-to-5 job to you, how likely are you to do great work? I don't think you have to have an obsessive, does-nothing-but-code-and-sleep kind of passion to be great, or at least moderately great. But you have to care about your craft, about the quality of the code you produce, or you won't produce anything approaching "great".