Very nice answer. I have been reading Coders At Work by Peter Seibel, and one common pattern which I noticed among all the programmers mentioned in the book wa

Very nice answer. I have been reading Coders At Work by Peter Seibel, and one common pattern which I noticed among all the programmers mentioned in the book was they worked under another good programmer in their initial years (Jamie Zawinski under Norvig), which was implicit mentoring IMO. All my college life, I have worked on a lot of projects (Personal & at Internship) which involves different technologies, and as you said most of the work is figuring out how to do X in the new language or framework. One key thing which I have taken from everyone, is that learning never stops. The mode of learning keeps changing through out our life, from rote learning in early school to formal learning in high school and college and then to informal learning afterwards.