Care
Care - it is the most important thing
There is a lot of talk in our world about imposter syndrome. I don't believe this is real. I can't remain stuck in denial forever.
As programmers, we must admit that we are not that smart. No, really. If we were genuinely smart and did not care, we would be in marketing / sales. We would not be writing code.
As programmers, we are not very smart. What we are is lazy. I am incredibly lazy. However, I am also stupid. Therefore, I might end up spending ten hours to automate a task that takes ten minutes to do without automation. That is ok because I can't change the fact that I am not very smart.
So far I have asserted that I am not smart and also I am lazy. Which brings me to my topic: care. What I do have is I care. I care about the code I write. I care about the people who will interact with the code I write. I care about future me who might need to maintain the ball of mud I write.
I am a programmer because I care.