I think it's a bit of a generalisation, but one often made by others to suggest that programmers think differently.
To a computer user, their approach to solving a problem may be different than a programmer's (want to be able to do this, write program to do it) but the same traits that commonly exist in competent programmers also exist in other professions. Am I a programmer? I program, I write software that I earn money from, but it's not the main part of my profession, so perhaps I'm not qualified to talk about this.
Many lawyers see the world in a different way to the rest of us. Marketers often see the world differently. I can't really speak for them though as I'm definitely not a lawyer or marketer.
What I can tell you about are penetration testers. When you look at a building, you probably look at the shape, admire the architecture, maybe look around to see if it fits in with it's surroundings. A penetration tester (a seasoned one anyway) doesn't do that. They're looking at entrances, exits, security guards, windows. It's automatic. The other stuff comes too, but experienced pentesters who enjoy their job see the world in a completely different way to a lot of people. When you see a shiny new piece of tech, a pentester's already thinking about how to jailbreak it and what they want to do with it afterwards. There's a specific mindset for a good pentester. Not all penetration testers have it, but you can spot the ones that do a mile off.
I dare say that this mindset exists amongst programmers too, particularly those that have done a lot of debugging or TDD. I'm just more familiar with the penetration tester mindset given my experiences.
To a computer user, their approach to solving a problem may be different than a programmer's (want to be able to do this, write program to do it) but the same traits that commonly exist in competent programmers also exist in other professions. Am I a programmer? I program, I write software that I earn money from, but it's not the main part of my profession, so perhaps I'm not qualified to talk about this.
Many lawyers see the world in a different way to the rest of us. Marketers often see the world differently. I can't really speak for them though as I'm definitely not a lawyer or marketer.
What I can tell you about are penetration testers. When you look at a building, you probably look at the shape, admire the architecture, maybe look around to see if it fits in with it's surroundings. A penetration tester (a seasoned one anyway) doesn't do that. They're looking at entrances, exits, security guards, windows. It's automatic. The other stuff comes too, but experienced pentesters who enjoy their job see the world in a completely different way to a lot of people. When you see a shiny new piece of tech, a pentester's already thinking about how to jailbreak it and what they want to do with it afterwards. There's a specific mindset for a good pentester. Not all penetration testers have it, but you can spot the ones that do a mile off.
I dare say that this mindset exists amongst programmers too, particularly those that have done a lot of debugging or TDD. I'm just more familiar with the penetration tester mindset given my experiences.