• I've got a feeling that I disagree with most of these comments if they are meant to apply to programmers rather than DBAs.

    Programmers do well to study the code written by the masters, and study that code in depth. I learned far more from studying in depth the code written by Jonathan Sachs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Sachs code (the guy who originally wrote Lotus 123 and STOIC) than from a whole shelf of books. I pored over everything that was written by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie. If you do not study Ken Henderson's books, you're doing yourself a disservice.

    Most of the list given in Steve's example are B-list in terms of the art of programming, but it contains one or two programmers who should be on everyone's list. If I interview a programmer who has never heard of Knuth, then I know he/she has never studied algorithms and I'm sure that this will handicap their ability to write really great code.

    If we studied the work of the great programmers such as Charles Moore in more detail, then the current dreadful standard of coding that we come across must surely improve. We have no reason to feel complacent that we can somehow do better than they did without being familiar with what they did. That is pure arrogance.

    I've interviewed, and appointed, several programmers who subsequently enjoyed great success. They had no qualifications at all, and were from a wide range of cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. The one thing they had in common was that they had studied the art of programming and knew the work of the greatest proponents of the art. It takes a great deal of effort to become a skilled programmer, and I'd never want to work with a programmer who can't be bothered to study the work of the greats.

    Best wishes,
    Phil Factor