&gt; I liken coding to playing a musical instrument.<p>Except with a musical instrument, <i>anybody</i> can judge whether you are good at it. Not so with programming. Everybody who ever wrote one line of HTML can call themself a programmer, but only trained people can tell whether you are a good one.<p>You might say at this point: so what? But I think the distinction is important, because it may be the reason the &quot;driving force&quot; is missing for a lot of people. If programming really had &quot;rock stars&quot; we might have had a lot more good programmers.