The many commenters pointing out that passion and professionalism can co-exist may be right. However they aren’t answering the objection that a variety of passions co-existing side-by-side (say for writing poetry as well as programming) can actually help someone’s professional life.

Talking about all those famous programmers like Bill Gates, Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Wozniak, etc, all were able to achieve success firstly because they are passionate programmers. There must have been times when they would have focussed sorely on programming for hours on end when it was needed to solve a particular programming problem. And you tend to spend hours on something only when you are passionate about it. Maybe being passionate tends to being addicted because only when you are addicted to something can you achieve mastery in that.

After this post , i think i need to modify one of my blog post that wrote about “what it takes to be a good programmer”

Thanks

The impression I get from Soon’s post is that anything less than total dedication is insufficient for a sustained career. I don’t believe that. You can have a measured sense of gumption which produces no less effectively than someone with an excess amount. I care for what I do, but I don’t feel the need to be a gold medalist or the Tiger Woods of X. (Or the Tiger Woods of anything, given his current situation.)

At the same time, if I end up putting in my 10,000 hours and becoming a master of what I do, all the better.

Lacking that gumption is what would get a person into trouble.

I love what I do, I’m passionate about computers and programming, and my love and interest in electronics directed me towards computers and I remember the first time I switched on my first computer, a Sinclair ZX-81, and typed in the lines of my first program, I knew this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life as a career. I’m passionate about what I do, but I don’t always love it and sometimes wish I was doing something else, but that passion drives me continually to learn more, learn new skills, and always do the very best job I can, every time, even though I might not love the particular project I’m working on, I can’t do a second-rate job – the passion I have and the love for my work means that not striving to do my best is failing at my own values.

But, in the same way that the skill doesn’t necessarily equate to passion, the existence of the passion doesn’t automatically imply the skills are there to satisfy it. And that’s where the drive for learning and improving yourself come in, and where the passion really helps. If you desperately want to learn how to do something because you have the passion driving you then you will learn it, and you continue to learn more and more new things which in turn feed your passion and drive to better yourself and do a good job – no, a great job!

I have a passion for computers and programming, but I know I don’t always have the skills to do the job, so I’m driven not only by a requirement to learn but the passion to learn, and I get just as much satisfaction for myself just out of learning how to do something as I do in actually putting that knowledge into practice.

Passion is not the be all and end all, but it cannot be discarded as unimportant. It *is* a factor in why some people are better at some things than others. Skill, ability and talent combine to make someone extremely adept at a particular task, but throw passion into the mix and you give that person drive, a turbo-boost in essence, to take that skill and turn it into Jedi Mastery.

But that’s not at odds with being passionate about programming–not at all.

I’d also disagree that passion is necessarily fleeting.

My personal opinion is that both passion and professionalism is required to be a really good programmer. But of course priorities change throughout life and sometimes other things tend to get more attention.

I also appreciate the point about education. My personal take on this have been to start working without going to university. But taking courses on the side. Having worked 10 years as a programmer makes it really easy to take these courses and helps me solidify my practical experience into lasting knowledge. It also helps me in regards of critically evaluating my performance and knowing my weak spots. In turn helping me develop those points and further evolve in my professional field.

Working full time and at the same time educating myself within the same field would not have been possible without some degree of passion I think.

I agree with the 10k hours that you need to really be good at something. It’s the same with playing the piano or any other instrument. If you work on it, you’ll get good. Maybe you’re not the next Mozart, but not everyone needs to be on the top. That’s why I don’t like the sports examples: you’re always talking about the gold medal winners. 😉 We won’t have cars, won’t have great buildings and won’t have a lot of others great things if there weren’t all the people that care about what they do and that really do a good job without standing out of the crowd. I think that is a much overseen part of professional work.

For me this discussion about passion is on the same level as the discussion about rockstar programmers and the whole “programming is creative work” things. You need the bright heads and the spare moments of genius to build really great things, but after that, you need a lot of dedicated and stubborn people to work on it every day from 9 to 5. 🙂