Great Hackers, a nice essay by Paul Graham. Includes fun bits like, "The programmers you'll be able to hire to work on a Java project won't be as smart as the ones you could get to work on a project written in Python." Which actually follows the much more important bit, "...[W]hen you choose a language, you're also choosing a community."

And, "Working on nasty little problems makes you stupid. Good hackers avoid it for the same reason models avoid cheeseburgers."

And:

I've found that people who are great at something are not so much convinced of their own greatness as mystified at why everyone else seems so incompetent. The people I've met who do great work rarely think that they're doing great work. They generally feel that they're stupid and lazy, that their brain only works properly one day out of ten, and that it's only a matter of time until they're found out.