Besides the opinion of Joe Armstrong about What Joe Armstrong did to be a better programmer? and Joe Armstrong and the Print Statements he also has an interesting opinion about other skills not related to programming but which are such a wonderful tool to have, a very strong nice to have we could say.

Seibel: Are there other skills that are not directly related to programming that you feel have improved your programming or that are valuable to have as a programmer?

Armstrong: Writing is. There’s some computer scientist that said, “Oh, if you’re no good at English you’ll never be a very good programmer.”

Seibel: I think Dijkstra had something about that.

Armstrong: I’ve occasionally been asked to advise people at universities on choice of syllabus subjects for computer science courses, being as how I work for industry—what does industry want? And I say, “Well, turn ’em out being able to write and argue cogently.” Most graduates who come out, and
they’ve got degrees in computer science, writing’s not their strong point. I think it’s actually very difficult to teach because it’s very individual. Somebody’s got to take your text and a red pen and explain to you what you did wrong. And that’s very time consuming. Have you ever read
Hamming’s advice to young researchers?

Seibel: “You and Your Research”?

Armstrong: He says things like, “Do good stuff.” He says, “If you don’t do good stuff, in good areas, it doesn’t matter what you do.” And Hamming said, “I always spend a day a week learning new stuff. That means I spend 20 percent more of my time than my colleagues learning new stuff. Now 20 percent at compound interest means that after four and a half years I will know twice as much as them. And because of compound interest, this 20 percent extra, one day a week, after five years I will know three times as much,” or whatever the figures are. And I think that’s very true. Because I do research I don’t spend 20 percent of my time thinking about new stuff, I spend 40 percent of my time thinking about new stuff. And I’ve done it for 30 years. So I’ve noticed that I know a lot of stuff. When I get pulled in as a troubleshooter, boom, do it that way, do it that way. You were asking earlier what should one do to become a better programmer? Spend 20 percent of your time learning stuff—because it’s compounded. Read Hamming’s paper. It’s good. Very good.

Coders at Work – Page 233 – Joe Armstrong