It is an interesting question what motivation you need to be a good programmer. Some of the folks go through their career where they were never challenged to write better code or just try out something new (functional languages for example). They end up in leadership bringing they narrow minded approach with them and guess what, making sure the next generation of engineers are following their steps. This makes is really hard to identify yourself as programmer, if all above is what it means to be one. I have seen companies (specially smaller or medium sized ones) having these tendencies. You can go after better jobs, and if you are lucky you might end up working for a company which does not force you to use a certain environment and you can experiment with new ways of solving problems and pick the one which suits the problem the best. Be realistic, these companies are not common. Ask the question again, what motivation you need to be a good programmer? Motivation to seamlessly integrate with any software development team? Motivation to pursue higher standards? Motivation to solve a problem an elegant way? I am not sure what it means to be a good programmer, the definition is highly dependent on who you ask.

I am wondering what happens if you attack the password consists of common words (mentioned in the XKCD post) with dictionary attack. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_attack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_table

Wow, shiny new feature.