Top Ten Tips to become a Rock Star Programmer

On Digg they had this article about the top ten tips to become a Rock Star Programmer:

Here are some of the tips I liked or related the most to me and what I should work towards.

#7 Go back and enhance your old code

Not that it is sound from an economical point of view but because you learn oodles of things reading you own crap, which old code always is. Code gets rotten after a couple of years, it really does, since you evolve. If you can't find bad things in your old code you either already are a rock star programmer, or maybe more probable, hasn't evolved much lately.

This is good advice and something I never do.  I am of the mindset if it ain't broke don't fix it.  But then like he says it'll never evolve.

#9 Don't ask people for advice

Learn how to get that answer yourself instead, it is way more useful. Finding out how to get information about something is a value in itself and may pay you back more than the solution to the problem in the first place. Ask only if you must or if the question in itself is more a discussion and you are actually spreading information. Of course you shouldn't take this too literally, but I see lots of people asking pointless questions they could have found out faster by ten seconds of googling.

I am so guilty of this.  I am always going to my co-workers for questions.  Mostly though it's because I don't know what to search for.  But if I would follow this tip:

#6 Read books

You might be good at what you do, but knowing only that, whatever it may be, is seldom enough to really shine. Knowing enough about more fields than the field you are about to shine in is golden. Take for instance a GUI coder that knows nothing about databases. He might be almost useless since he can't interact with the guy doing the backing store, and so on. It takes as much effort to be 90% good in five fields than to be 99% good one one.

Maybe I would know more about what I need to know.

Anyways there are some good tips in the article...some common sense tips and others that should make you reevaluate yourself.