Becoming Great

No matter how hard some people try and find it, there is no secret to being a great programmer. The same goes for any trade, whether you're a designer, painter, writer, or carpenter. The only "secret" is to be passionate and fully present at whatever it is you're doing, to work at it day and night, and to keep doing that for a really, really long time. No one has ever become a great writer by buying the perfect distraction free writing environment. No one has ever become a master programmer by trying to convince the internet that only node.js and mongodb are webscale. If more people realized that, many more people would be a lot closer to actually being masters.

Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now)