I have been working on an application for the android market for about 5 months now, and its finally starting to look like something I am proud to call my own(tentative release date december 1)… the other day I implemented my first recursive method within the app, and that also was a very proud moment for me, I am sure if you had seen my face when I finally figured it out you would have been able to tell. The method was nothing extraordinary, for most experienced programmers I am sure it would have been trivial, but for me, my chest puffed up, my face wore a shit eating grin, and for that moment I was victorious… These little victory’s, although sometimes few and far between, along with a little help from the community at JGO, have given me the motivation to make it this far… I am sure you all have your moments of glory, what are they, and how do you celebrate them?
Things that I consider awesome, no matter how hard it was to implement, are the reason I’m a programmer. It doesn’t matter if it’s just a cool lighting effect, insane number of advanced GPU-accelerated particles running in realtime or something I saw in a game and wanted to implement myself, it’s still the same feeling. Celebration is traditionally Pocky and comedy anime. xDDD
EDIT: Waaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit… Pat on my back? Like this?
Moments of glory usually are when something FINALLY works. This is usually when I code something from scratch, run it and find lots of bugs. 
Implementations that work as intended the first time ran.
Yes. I get very upbeat and happy after a programming victory. My wife immediately notices.
My favorite victories with Java (been teaching myself, coming up on two years) also include the first working recursion, a “smoke genie” (a smoke effect using transparencies), the first gel effect using Java 2D, and, just two weeks ago, a particularly encouraging week: (1) my first working Frequency Modulation synthesis, (2) making a working audio Mixer, and (3) understanding (finally) the explanation of the Discrete Fourier Transform which has been a road block to doing audio filtering.
I also got a compliment last week from the nurses that use an app I wrote (MS Access VBA) to assist with calculating drug regimens for pediatric bone marrow transplant patients, that this program was not only a great help, it was going to enhance patient safety.
So I start to think, maybe I AM a “real” programmer. (Whatever that is.)
Then, I look at the job listings and come back down to earth.
I am currently working on a space fleet game and have gotten to the point where I need to start building the interior layout of the ships. I have defined a ship definition file and was creating everything by hand, but it soon got unwieldy. So I built a tool that allows me to build ship interiors. I can create ships, load existing files and save new ones. I even have some visual niceties like highlighting rows and buttons, and visual indication of errors (such as when you have a ship compartment that is open to space.
Why was I so pleased with this? Because despite a bone headed question, I was able to build the entire working application in one day.
So many times, I’ve seen on forums where someone posts screen shots of something they started just a few days ago and it always amazed and disheartened me. Everything I do (even the simple things) seems to be me mentioned in weeks, so the idea that I could build anything functional in a few days seemed out of reach.
So how do I pat myself on the back? You mean besides bragging on JGO? 
Another little victory, sitting away from the computer, pen and paper in hand, writing a function/series of functions and seeing through the bugs before implementation. Thats a new one for me, it wasnt possible a month or so ago… ;D
There are two things that get me super proud of myself.
The first is when I think up and idea, and think of all the code, and just do it without having to restructure my idea.
The second is when I can sit down one evening and write an entire game. This one probably more, because I often get into the mindset that I am trapped into a current project and I am making very little headway, and so it is nice to prove to myself that I havent gotten worse, the problems have just gotten better haha.
RCing (release candidate build) a very big mobile game this weekend. It will be on Android for limited locations and devices (Galaxy SII, Galaxy S, Evo 4G) in a couple weeks. It is always tremendously satisfying when you’ve been spending 60 hours a week busting your ass and then finally see your project out in the world.
@Eli
Which game?
You work for ngmoco? That’s awesome!
Yeah for the last 2 years. It’s a good place to learn.