Top 5 Attributes of Highly Effective Programmers
Ben Watson, whose blog I just came across, lists the following Top 5 Attributes...
- Humility
- Love of Learning
- Detail-orientedness
- Adaptability
- Passion
I think this is a very good list. I think effective programmers are humble. Why? Because you have to be able to work well with others. Just from my experience, it's hard to work with people with a lot of ego.
You just have to love to learn. Effective programmers constantly improve. How do you improve? By finding new ways of doing the things you're used to... better. You have to be exposed to new ways in order to do that. Being able to adopt and having a passion for the profession are essential.
Reference
Philosophical Geek -> Top 5 Attributes of Highly Effective Programmers, Philosophical Geek blog
Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0
Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 (5th Edition)
by Bill Burke, Richard Monson-Haefel
ISBN 059600978X
Date Read 11/2007My Rating 
One Minute Review
Positives
* Excellent coverage of EJB technologies
* Thorough coverage of Java Persistence
* Focuses on doing best-practice development
* Full of examples
Negatives
* Explanation on how to create an external client not clear
Summary
This is an excellent book on a simplified (still overcomplicated) EJB 3.0 technology. I had high hopes for this book and for the technology in general. I am still skeptical. I think this book shows the state of EJB well: greatly simplified in version 3.0, but still a complex beast. I liked this book's thorough treatment of the subject (although at times I thought it would never end); I liked the authors' numerous recommendations and explanations of the best practices. I think this is a very good book, but in my opinion the technology and this book could use even a more drastic reduction in complexity. For instance, I still had a hard time creating an external client application.
Test Driven
Test Driven
by Lasse Koskela
ISBN 1932394850
Date Read 12/2007My Rating
One Minute Review
Positives
* Excellent coverage of Test Driven development
* Covers many development best practices
* Excellent writing style
Negatives
* Could be more concise
Summary
This is an excellent book on TDD -- I think it's the best book on the subject. At first, I thought this book is going to be just a review of the commonly known practices: test-code-refactor. Not true! In this book, I learned a lot more about this practice (of course), but also about how to do other types of testing (servlet, db, jsp, swing, and more), and also about the different tools available for the task. I really liked the author's open, direct style of writing. Makes it an interesting and a worthwhile read.