On slashdot today, there was an article about why programmers are often not paid what they are worth, along with this comment about Larry Wall's Virtues of a Programmer.   

 It struck me this might be instructive for parents of autistics, so here's my four marks of a great autistic software engineer (with apologies to Larry):

 1.  Lazyness- quite often autistic people are accused of this one, for the same reason Larry's great programmers are.  In reality, we're just looking for the most efficient way to get things done without wearing ourselves out; social interaction is so hard and tiring, why should we waste our energy on anything less?

 2.  Impatience- just try to talk to your kid about his latest obsession when you haven't spent as many hours as he has studying it....and you'll really know the meaning of the word impatience.  In computers, though, this means that we don't like bugs and seek to eradicate errors.   Or at least, minimize their effects.

3.  Hubris- yep, us programmers have a tendency to be on the neurodiversity side of things, or in the words of one person on alt.support.autism in the old Usenet days- we have Addams Family Syndrome.  WE ARE NORMAL, IT IS THE REST OF THE WORLD THAT IS WEIRD FOR NOT BEING ABLE TO DO WHAT WE DO.

4.  OCD.  Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder.  Here I leave Larry and his neurotypical engineers behind- The best programs written by autistic programmers will never ship, because we'll never be satisfied that they are complete.  Takes a good manager to work around this problem.