Sanity disclaimer: I'm sure right/left brained isn't the best or most current model of personality/cognition, but it's widely known and helps to frame this question, which I find interesting.
Is there a personality type which makes for better programmers?
Character of the archetypical left-brained person:
fastidious
strong logical/reasoning skills
thinks in terms of structures
whereas the right-brained person
finds creative/un-obvious solutions to problems
good at thinking laterally
thinks in analogies, better at spotting similarities than differences
Now there are many different ‘modes of thought’ a programmer encounters: coming up with the organising principles of a framework, chasing down a Heisenbug, finding a (slightly dirty) solution which saves having to re-write masses of code; these require very different cognitive skills.
Do different parts of a companies’ dev community tend to be populated by one personality type? Should even small teams contain a mix?
Is it possible to be a very right-brained, very productive programmer? And if so, is it at all clear to non-programmers that a career in software development is possible if you’re the “creative type”?
Is there a personality type which makes for better programmers?
Character of the archetypical left-brained person: fastidious strong logical/reasoning skills thinks in terms of structures
whereas the right-brained person finds creative/un-obvious solutions to problems good at thinking laterally thinks in analogies, better at spotting similarities than differences
Now there are many different ‘modes of thought’ a programmer encounters: coming up with the organising principles of a framework, chasing down a Heisenbug, finding a (slightly dirty) solution which saves having to re-write masses of code; these require very different cognitive skills.
Do different parts of a companies’ dev community tend to be populated by one personality type? Should even small teams contain a mix?
Is it possible to be a very right-brained, very productive programmer? And if so, is it at all clear to non-programmers that a career in software development is possible if you’re the “creative type”?