Before I learned any programming skills, I worked with a bunch of great coders and learned a lot from them. I remember being impressed with the guy that would log on to start his day, but then sit back and have some coffee, M&Ms and read the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip from the newspaper (yeah this was long ago.) When I asked him about it, he explained that it was one of the important aspects of the life of a programmer to be aware of: if they are walking around the office with a distracted look on their face, you still want to sort of "knock" before walking right up and dropping a big issue or request on them, they might be doing the most difficult work of their day!

I eventually learned to code and would often find it to be my favorite part of the job--the looking out the window and planning the attack phase.