1. Ask why obsessively
2. Teach and/or speak at an event
3. Work through a suggested curriculum*
4. Experiment recklessly (the code doesn't care)
5. Have opinions
6. Seek mentorship
7. Program a lot
8. Stop fucking programming sometimes.
9. Write Javascript* a lot
10. Write in another language for a while
11. Think like a programmer when afk
12. Know what feedback is good feedback and reject everything else.
13. Break free of imposter syndrome
* These are the two points you'll need to adapt to your choice of language
So the "special" surface needs to be anything that conducts electricity but is not magnetic, which is a pretty broad category. https://sg.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=201202290514... has quite a long list.
The images with the lego suggests that they're using copper, which is right at the top of that list for conductivity, but 7 orders of magnitude weaker is plain old sea water, so maybe hendo is not entirely joking about the hovering on water thing ;)