If you read this and it causes you even the slightest twinge of doubt as to whether you are a "real programmer", please remind yourself about things you read on the internet, forget you ever read this self-indulgent blog post, and go buy yourself an ice cream cone.

One of the comments to the article references the Dreyfus learning model (described at http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000203.html) which should - somewhat - allay those fears :)

In my opinion, no one without serious programming credentials has any business writing articles like this one: telling others what "real programmers" are like (and often implying that the author is one of those programming demigods).

Fair enough if you share something you've learned that helps you be more efficient, write less buggy code etc -- I like reading that kind of essays. Making generalized statements in god mode like in TFA -- I just find that amusing.

Who is this guy? Writing a MIPS cache simulator is hardly a challenge -- we had to write one for the computer architecture class at uni (http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/car/)

Where's the downvote button when you need it?

Great method for making your facebook app, not so great for flying the space shuttle.

There are different kinds of code and different kinds of programmers. So much so that "real programmer" is like likely a nonsense statement, especially if it has anything to do with "gut feelings".

"Of course, every once in a while an impromptu idea may not be perfect; indeed, it's possible that they're fatally flawed."

Fooled. By. Randomness.

Trust but Verify