You just don’t become a good programmer through sheer force :
I didn’t miss the long hours or the stress, but I missed being surrounded by lots of really smart people, and sitting down in front of a computer to just crank out code.
I start experiencing that too (meaning, being surrounded by smart people). Chad Fowler wrote it was like being the worst player of the band. Your skills are leveraged by the overall technical skills.
And we do have sometimes good discussions (when we don’t talk about Maven).