What makes a good programmer?

[Karl Becker]

Uh oh Shari, looks like you have a full-fledged manifesto here, if you 
add a few bullet points resummarizing your points  ;-)

Where you said:

> What makes a good programmer?
>
> LOTS of testing.
> ...
> Never assume the standalone version will work exactly as the stack 
> version.
> ...
> I will be surprised if my beta testers give it a go ahead with no 
> bugs.  There is so much in this program.

Here's an interesting software-development paradigm you may not have 
read about before (I didn't until just a month ago or so):
http://www.idevgames.com/content/article.php?id=40

Zero-Defect Software Development, meaning you'll never implement 
something without making sure it works completely and doesn't break any 
of your previously-written script/code.  It's interesting, and it's 
something I'm using to work on my newest project, an entry in the 
iDevGames.com contest.  For making something and getting it to the 
world quickly, I think using zero-defect development is the only way to 
go, otherwise you'll have some really ugly bugs that you'll have to 
spend way too much time trying to fix.

On a side note, I think RAD-developed games could really shine in a 
contest like this.  Of course, Apple's OS X Developer Tools are getting 
closer and closer to RAD tools all the time... though the language is 
still nowhere near as easy as MetaTalk.
--
Go Bison!
http://www.karlbecker.com