Merlin Mann of 43Folders (one of my faborite personal productivity sites) has a great series of articles (with more to come) about getting your email inbox to empty , and dealing with the overwhelming amount of email some technology professionals receive...

On a private discussion forum that I frequent, someone asked for advice I would give to a 16 year old that they were mentoring that had an interest in programming. A healthy debate ensued about what constitured a real programmer. I asserted the following...