eeeeeee: The first derivative of "imagination is more important than knowledge" is "curiosity is more important than discipline." eeeeeee: Eric Raymond says the best metaphors for hackers are to be found in set theory, combinatorics, and graph theory. eeeeeee: The other answer to this question, though, is that to be a good programmer (or good at anything), you need to know about everything, because everything people do is related. eeeeeee: "When Robert got kicked out of grad school for writing the Internet worm of 1988, I envied him enormously for finding a way out without the stigma of failure.