>> I don't know about this "you either have it or don't" business, but
>> here are some skills/interests IMHO that will help make you successful:
>>
>> 1) problem solving - this may be why many programmers are also puzzle
>>    and game fans
>>
>> 2) ability to synthesize and be creative
>>
>> 3) attention to detail
>>
>> 4) oral and written communication skills

Personally, I believe that communication skills should be much, much higher
in importance.  Programming is so much more a matter of communicating
between human beings than it was in the past, when it was a matter of
communicating between humans and machines.  IMHO a person who can write a
decent paragraph in their native language can produce more readable source
text than someone who cannot.  (Note I didn't say "English".   The specific
native language is not relevant, except perhaps that the tokens of the major
programming languages are biased towards English.)  This opinion is related
to why I abhor the use of certain naming schemes, such as appending "_t" to
type names.  Individuals with a more extensive vocabulary can do better.

>>
>> 5) patience - most any program will come together after a couple
>>    30-hour debugging sessions (sorry, can't remember who first
>>    said that, so no attribution)
>>
>> 6) desire to keep learning new things: tools, programming languages,
>>    programs, architectures, etc.
>>
>> --
>> Terry J. Westley, Principal Engineer
>> Calspan, An operation of Veridian
>> P.O. Box 400, Buffalo, NY 14225
>> [log in to unmask]   http://www.calspan.com
>