Hopefully I'm not contributing to the "schism" here, but: I tend to divide programmers into "drones" and "meta-drones" (for want of better words). First, "met

Hopefully I'm not contributing to the "schism" here, but: I tend to divide programmers into "drones" and "meta-drones" (for want of better words). First, "meta-drones" consider the "meta" level of programming, i.e. "could I program more reliably if I were using a different language?" or "how can I prevent myself from making similar mistakes in the future". Surprisingly few programmers actually fall into this category. This is obviously IME, so the usual observer/survivor biases may apply. In contrast, a "drone" will just "get the job done" without any further thought. As far as I've been able to ascertain, code maintainability/quality is entirely orthogonal to the "archetype", but there's a clear tendency that the "meta-drone" tends to improve by orders of magnitude over time. The number of hours of work put in has no significant effect when you account for those orders of magnitude.