>>>>Well I never said I was normal... though if I'm also nuts I've never measured to what degree. Maybe I should just look at the(1+rmometer).
>>>
>>>Normal? I can not code and claim to be normal.
>>
>>You're perpendicular?
>
>Is this a requirement?
>
>View one
>To be a good programmer, you must have an odd view, programming is more about what possibly could go wrong then straight forward solution seeking.
>
>View two
>To program, one must have an analytical mind
>
>Now, tell me what of both is normal? Both are rare. The first one makes a good nitpicker, the second one a scientist.
>The combination is even odder. This will bounce back to daily life. Normal. in the sense of common, is something different.
>
>To have the skills, one will normally end up IQ125 and above. This is a rarity of 21 or only 4.75% will end up there. Assuming the sum of all skills is constant, one pay a price for this. Bein social awkward, have two hand full of thumbs, name it. IOW - not normal. Normal is IQ 100, that's the definition.

Pure Thumbs ? Dunno... Was able to fix the 2-stroke 2 wheels teen and for short period twen time again and do simple fixes on first car. Learned that the experience others have doing that kind of thing few days a week made them more than twice as fast. Can assemble Ikea rigs without loosing control or screws. After C64, Compaq luggable and Atari ST built all my own computers till early this century - at the end mostly adding/swapping memory and disks regularly (got even 2 Adaptec SCSI controllers to behave on same rig...) which I still prefer to do myself now, as errors might involve more work for me.

Decided early on that mens sana in corpore sano might have benefits not only avoiding bruises in unwanted situations but might attract those often longer haired creatures not from Mars. Also found out that booze can regulate thinking speed and personal values to levels you cite as being nearer to normal, so I could blend in with only a few more glasses - and realized I could often enjoy myself being there at same time. IMO "social awkward" is just not finding a herd you can run with, make the effort to blend in or both.

What you describe spot on is my heavy dose of ability to see cracks, failures, missing parts, loss of logic you named as view 1. But that only keeps me from inventing or building big architectures, fwks, concepts - plenty of good programmers who do not have that "knack" IMO.