Realisation

A Brief Blurb
What separates men from boys and by extent good programmers from great programmers? I honestly think the answer lays in how one thinks of a problem. Often people use tools they are familiar with, nevertheless these tools have the functionality for solving that problem but may lack the elegance other tools have to offer. For example using C++ you were asked to write a scripting engine for a game that interprets a text file which controls NCP's, movement, speech, collisions and much more... One solution would be to write a collection of classes that interact. Alternately, you could write a simple frame work that supports another language that offers better support and flexibility for parsing text files such as LUA. This script remains available for future use, and have already established a framework it makes easier to plug-play other scripts (very useful for collaborative development)...

Good V.S Great
The main point to get out of this post, is that to be a great programmer you need to extend and challenge your ability to look at a problem. Incorporate mathematical principles, use other tools don't be the type of programmer who just glues a bunch of libraries together. Don't get me wrong libraries are great, but in some cases there are better solutions.

references:
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/programming-and-development/?p=43