Does a programmer’s personality impact her or his programming performance? Understanding what drives the quality of software production is the topic of a large effort from the software engineering community. Oddly enough, relating the characteristics of personality to a programming activity is unfortunately little studied.

The paper investigates whether personality influences the performance of software engineering students. The authors found that the personality traits of extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and intellect did not significantly play a role in carrying out some programming activities. Another interesting finding is that students having a competitive personality were rated low in their programming skills.

Studying the personality of a programmer is rarely considered in software engineering conferences. This paper suggests that a bridge between psychology and software engineering is worth considering and remains largely unexplored. The paper is easy to read for a software engineer; no background in psychology is necessary.