It's all in the title really. How to be a programmer: a short, comprehensive, and personal summary is a short essay by Robert L. Read on how to be a programmer. It covers beginner, intermediate and advanced skills and breaks each one down into smaller areas such as personal skills, team skills, judgement etc. Each of these is broken down even further into specific skills.

I really enjoyed reading the essay and would recommend it to any programmer. It's not going to take you days to wade through, it's packed full of practical information based on experience, it's concise and well written. If I ever manage to get somewhere close to the knowledge and experience of the author, I'll be happy.

I've knocked up a mind map of the essay in the hope that some of the important points will stick. To create it I used bubbl.us.