Programming / Programmers / Logic etc

I'd say I probably have a more methodical approach to problem solving and things in general, yeah.

One example: a while back a couple of friends and I were building a new PC together. When it came to putting parts in, I insisted we take the time to test each part in isolation by having only the part in question and the essentials like power supply etc. installed, then booting up and ensuring everything worked as expected. (Unit testing, anyone? )

My friends on the other hand saw this as unnecessary and wanted to just rush ahead and install everything at once then fire it up.

The major benefit of my approach, I explained, was that if at any point the PC failed to boot up, we would immediately know exactly what part contains the problem - because we're only testing one at a time! Imagine the number of potential parts - and combinations of those parts - we'd have to debug if we ran into a problem having done it my friends' way.

For the record, we totally did fun into a faulty part during that build, so my approach really paid off. :p

This anecdote applies more specifically to testing than general programming I guess, but you get the idea - programming definitely changes and improves how you might approach real world problems.