I was thinking about how the language you speak influences your thoughts and thinking process. This is clear to anyone who can speak multiple languages. And this is also I think a reason why learning a foreign language can be addictive, you get to rewire your brain.
The same can be said for programming. Yes there is the direct programming language analogy, but I think it gets even deeper as far as the code bases you hack the most. Linux kernel people tend to write userland programs a certain way, for example (and many of us even still try to use 'printk' when doing so).
And you'll see a gcc oriented person write kernel changes in a certain manner as well.
I find this odd because even though when I hack the X server I comply by using symbol names that LookLikeTHIS in order to be consistent with the rest of the tree, the kernel guy in me still stands out.
This reminds me of something that ought to be a part of hacker lore. And any programmer who says he doesn't do the following is either lying or is not really a programmer.
Say you've been doing nothing for the past few weeks except looking for a real nasty and hard to trigger bug. You think you're getting close and the one piece of debugging information is just around the corner, perheps the next build or the one after that will spit out the debugging message you need to find the bug. All the rest of your work is being blocked by this problem, you have to fix it.
You've been drinking coffee all day, and guzzling water as well.
So now you have to go REALLY BAD, you're about to pee your pants. What do you do? Do you go to the toilet and take care of things or you cross your legs as hard as humanly possible thinking "just one more build, just one more" for the next half hour?
If you're one of the ones who would go to the toilet you're not a programmer. :-)