A long-time friend pointed me to another "categorize yourself" site the 
other day, this time it's a 
<a href="http://www.doolwind.com/index.php?page=11"> 
Programmer Personality Test</a>.  He pointed out that it's only 12 
questions, wouldn't take long, and he'd be 
interested in how I scored.  I found the questions really irritating, but 
the results led to some interesting discussion that my friend suggested might 
be worth a blog entry.

I get either a DLSB or PLSB, depending on which arbitrary choices I make on 
several questions where neither option is at all representative of my world 
view.  He found this interesting, since I'm the only other person he's talked
to about this that also got a P.  He also noted that LS seems to be very 
strong in all the "real programmers" he knows, and wondered if that might be
why managing programmers is so much like herding cats.

One of the bits that I find so artificial about this is that the model that 
I personally find most effective in the loner/group continuum isn't reflected 
by the questions at all.  It's neither a "do it all myself" nor a "engage with 
everyone before doing anything" approach.  The free software community 
collaboration experience has proven to <em>me</em> that the most effective 
approach is a hybrid, where you "do something" followed by engaging 
collaborators, who may well help you decide to throw a lot away, which is ok 
if it was a learning experience, and/or it leads to a better result.  In the 
end, you may not even be the center of attention or "owner" of the result.

In fact, often the way to get something done right is ensure that you get the
right person to do it, which often isn't yourself... but the strategy for 
getting the right person to do it is almost never to engage in group-think 
before doing any work!  It seems to me that in our community, leading usually
starts with doing, while success is related to who else gets motivated to 
follow your lead and join in the doing...

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