You don't need CS or a strong math background to be a decent programmer. It might help (or it might not . . . ), but it isn't required. Math majors put a lot of emphisis of rigor, which is necessary for understanding complex algorithms. However, a good programmer knows how to abstract problems, which in some ways is the opposite of rigor.

Second, can you add some neeps to the carrots, please?

A CS degree may be helpful, but I suspect that any rigorus training in critical thinking is a good foundation for computer programming. Programming is more a way of looking at Problems and decomposing them into handle-able chunks than it is compiler design or theoretical algorithmic analysis.

A Programmer (Hacker, Systems Analyst, what's in the name) sees the World differently, not as a monolithic Thing, but as a set (albeit a very large set) of inter-related and inter-dependent parts. The trick is to understand the information flow between the various parts so you can modify its path and make something new out of it. Understanding how to understand the relationships between things inside (and outside) The Machine is often more important that the pure book-learnin'.

Knowing that the theory exists is useful, but application is everything. (I once told a manager "No, I don't know what the multi-threaded Poly-Redundant sort algorithm does. I do now _how_ it does it, and that's enough." It was one of the more interesting performance reviews I ever had. We were still exploring the implications of my statement at my next quarterly review.)

Keep reading, keep exploring, keep coding. We are all Beginners here.

Michael (who doesn't have a CS background either...)

It is a "sign of intelligence" to realize "how much you do NOT know".

Roughly speaking about my own (real) XP ;-), the only purely technical things I kept from academic CS are:

• Boolean algebra
• Algorithm design

and theses basic topics are quite well explained in books, FAQs,... This is just easier having a teacher helping you to push the stuff into your brain than sitting on the books and waiting for the knowledge coming thanks to capilarity action (I tried this way, but this doesn't work very well).

More seriously and IMHO, the key is more (pedantically speaking) a matter of methodology, which is not a CS dedicated topic. There's a lot books about the subject which applied to CS leads to practices like SADT, UML, MERISE, and more recently eXtreme Programming. There you'll find helpful being subscribed to a public/university library. Lot's of these books are interesting to read but not worth to have always at home.

I don't claim to be a master programmer myself, and I lack the professional position and educational backing to properly label myself as one. But it makes me extremely proud to be able to say that I can solve most computing problems that cross my path, using the tools that I have available, constructing new ones when necessary. If anything, I would venture to say that that makes me a programmer.

Sure, reading a lot (both code and instructional material) has helped. But I think that what has made me a programmer (if I may be permitted to don extraordinary Hubris{tm} to describe myself thusly) most is that I use my skills as often as I can. Even when I'm working on one item, I test other things using one-liners. Some people have described programming as an art, and some other people have described programming as a science. I personally see it as a merging, a synthesis, of both. Developing one's ability in both is a function of practise: the more one practises, the better one's skill will become as a result of said practise.

I believe that Old_Gray_Bear described programming very accurately, though I have a couple of things to add. I personally see using computer languages to be very homologous to using natural languages. Many have said that learning a new language (natural or otherwise) is like learning a new way to think. It helps to understand at least one language well to serve as a basis for comparison, and to be able to recognise and thus grasp similar constructs. Language itself is part art, part science, and part something else. Unless you have a brilliant natural talent, you need to practise to become skilled with a language. Just as understanding the world can make you a better artist and a better scientist, so too can it make you a better programmer. I applaud Old_Gray_Bear for sharing their wisdom as I attempt to expand it to the slight degree that I can.