I came across this list some time ago and today i found it again in my bookmarks: People collected and voted on a list of habits that a person might have attained by working as a programmer and which he/she applies to real life. Some of them are pretty accurate, for example:

“I now consider 256 to be a nice, round number. Occasionally I’m caught off-guard when non-programmers don’t get that.”

“I tend to take things hyper-literally. For example, my wife was annoyed when she used to ask “Do you want to take out the garbage?” (no) instead of “Will you take out the garbage?” (yes). Whether this is a result of programming, or just an innate trait that helps in programming, I cannot say.”

“Knuth would kill me, but I try to optimize every single path that I take, from college to home or just to the bathroom. I also tend to try to optimize the flow of people serving things in restaurants. But that’s just sad.”

“I temporize way too much in conversation. Things that anyone else would say as fact, I will still throw a “probably” or “perhaps” on, because I know there could always be that one edge case where a meteor strikes my neighborhood and I wouldn’t after all be able to make it out that day to Thanksgiving dinner.”

“I try to compress orders at restaurants by giving all necessary information in one packet. This frequently does not work, because the order taker’s task buffer is limited to one piece of data at a time.

Fast Food [Guy|Girl]: Can I take your order?

Me: number 6, BBQ, diet cola, debit.

FFG: What dipping sauce would you like?

Me: BBQ, diet cola, debit.

FFG: What would you like to drink?

Me: Diet Cola, debit.

FFG: Is Pepsi OK?

Me: [ponders Abstract Base Classes and the FFG’s lack of Polymorphic Behavior] Sure. I’ll pay with my debit card.

FFG: And how will you be paying?

Me: [sighs] debit.”

“I google everything.” with the user comment “”ARE YOU CHEATING ON ME?” — “Hangon, lemme Google that quickly.””

Find the complete list here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/164432/what-real-life-bad-habits-has-programming-given-you