While the world of programming may not be quite as glamorous as the music industry, it still has plenty of its own rockstars. And truly great programmers are exceptional creatures worthy of our praise. After all, they may be the most underappreciated artists of our time.

Furthermore, understanding the traits that great programmers are comprised of will help you in your hunt for great programmers of your own. Here are the top five characteristics great programmers have in common.

1. Eagerness to Learn

Something that’s incredibly common in experts of just about any discipline is the drive to learn and continually improve. As a result, top-level performers are ever climbing to reach higher pinnacles of accomplishment and proficiency. This is especially true for the ever-changing world of software development.

Virtually all workers experience the impacts of new advancements made in their fields or related ones. But this is especially true for workers in the technology sectors, where advancements can come in leaps and bounds with little forewarning.

A desire to understand something is also a key component of a problem-solving mindset. After all, the first step in solving a problem is learning about the problem itself. And, infamously, much of a programmer’s job is finding and fixing bugs after all.

2. Communication Skills

Throughout humankind’s stay on this planet, we have proven time and again the importance of working together. It’s only through collaboration and teamwork that all of humanity’s greatest accomplishments were achieved. Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor was it built by a single person.

Ultimately, even the most skilled professionals of any field will quickly reach their own limitations when working alone. And it’s only through collaboration that they can push past those limitations and become truly great. This is especially true for software development, where systems can rapidly become incredibly complex—too complex for a single programmer to handle on their own.

Great programmers also need to interface with less technologically savvy individuals, like clients and account managers. After all, software development’s focus must always be on the goals and needs of the client. Creating a great system that clients can get the most out of requires constant feedback and revision. And that means strong communication skills are essential for great programmers.

3. Creativity

While many people think of programming as a hard science, it’s actually a discipline that requires a lot of creative thinking. Creativity is one of the core competencies necessary for a programmer to become great because so much of the job is about coming up with new ways to tackle problems.

Solving software issues requires programmers to think outside of the box and look at a problem from angles no one else would even consider. Due to how complex software systems become, finding bugs and fixing them is a practically endless process. And one that only gets more difficult as the system becomes more complex.

In fact, the challenge of solving new and novel issues is often cited as one of the biggest draws for programmers to their discipline.

4. Laser Focus

Along with a creative drive to solve problems, great programmers also have exquisite attention to detail and painstaking patience. The work of a programmer is often considered to be at least 50% debugging. This means two things: an attentive programmer making fewer mistakes initially can save a lot of time, and having the ability to pore over thousands of lines of code to find tiny discrepancies is essential for great programmers.

Along with that attention to detail comes a strong need for great patience and even temperament. It’s no secret that programming can be an incredibly frustrating job at times with long hours spent hunting down extraneous semicolons. It’s difficult to overstate how essential the ability to laser focus on a task is for great programmers.

5. They Work for Great Companies

Software development skills are incredibly high and still in rising demand. As such, truly great programmers have a veritable bottomless well of employment opportunities to choose from. And that’s exactly what makes finding a great programmer to add to your team so difficult.

At Upstack, we work with only the top 1% talent from across the globe because we understand the importance of having developers that are truly skilled in their craft. And we perform an extensive 8-stage vetting and evaluation process to ensure all of our engineers not only have the coding chops but all of the communication and collaboration skills necessary for them to truly shine.

Contact us to learn more about the incredibly talented developers we have waiting in the wings to bring your organization’s capabilities to the next level. Try our risk-free 14-day developer trial to see for yourself what a great programmer can add to your organization.

Upstack gives you the ability to search the perfect software dev for your project by skill, location, experience level and more. Contact us!