Ask HN: Essential skill needed to be a programmer?

In the book Coders at Work by Peter Siebel, he asks peter norvig this question:

"So is there any essential skill needed to be a programmer? Different domains obviously have different requirements but ultimately is there some commonality to writing code regardless of domain?"

Peters answer to this _really_ resonated with me - his first two sentences were "You've got to be able to make progress and then improve on it. That's all you need to be able to do in life."

How would you answer this question?

Most anyone can learn how to write code, however adding different skills can increase both the quality of what you produce, and the breadth of problems you can solve. You don't "need" to learn things like program complexity, but knowing it can help you write more efficient programs; you don't need to know math, but it helps if you want to work with encryption, and in a way testing, too.

What does that all boil down to? Probably curiosity, practically speaking. If you're genuinely interested in programming, and it's not just about money, status or proving some point, you'll be drawn to learn different things and have different discussions, over the whole course of your career, that will make you a good programmer, rather than just a passible coder.

Being able to memorize things.

Just thinking is not enough, you also have to be attentive. Yet another essential skill is to hear and see what is really there and not what your mind tricks you into seeing.

I've met plenty of programmers who had no sincere interest, but just saw it as a job they did 9-5 and then never thought about computers outside of those times. Programming was simply seen as a skill that could lead to comfortable, reasonably well paid job, and that was all the incentive they needed to learn the minimal amount needed to get said job. Basically as long you have an incentive to want to learn and a bit of tenacity you almost certainly can.