Ask HN: Essential skill needed to be a programmer?

Ask HN: Essential skill needed to be a programmer?
7 by catwind7 | 15 comments on Hacker News.
In the book Coders at Work by Peter Siebel, he asks peter norvig this question: "So is there any essential skill needed to be a programmer? Different domains obviously have different requirements but ultimately is there some commonality to writing code regardless of domain?" Peters answer to this _really_ resonated with me - his first two sentences were "You've got to be able to make progress and then improve on it. That's all you need to be able to do in life." How would you answer this question?