Programmer's virtues

Laziness


The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer.

Impatience


The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least that pretend to. Hence, the second great virtue of a programmer.

Hubris


Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zeus zaps you for. Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about. Hence, the third great virtue of a programmer.

(Excerpt from Programming Perl by Larry Wall, published by O'Reilly)

Laziness is me not wanting to type "according to the plat thereof recorded in plat book X page Y of the Z county records" fifty times over.  Laziness is spending a bit of time (my VBA skills were rusty, OK?) making a macro to do it for me, complete with documentation.  That macro is now part of the standard release procedure, and is to be installed on the machines of everyone who does releases, including my boss.  My bit of laziness has pretty much landed me a full time permanent job there, instead of a temp job, starting in November.  Laziness is a virtue.