Always remember the classic story about "where to put the X"... Have you ever heard of Charlie Steinmetz? Legend has it that he was a prominent electrical engi

Always remember the classic story about "where to put the X"... Have you ever heard of Charlie Steinmetz? Legend has it that he was a prominent electrical engineer in the early twentieth century. Not long after his retirement, all of the engineers at General Electric had a problem. Although each was wise, they were unable to understand the complexity of the machinery. A call was made and Charlie Steinmetz came to the plant to offer his assistance. Ol’ Charlie walked around the machine for a few minutes, just looking it over, not touching anything. After a few minutes, Charlie took out a piece of chalk, walked over and placed a large X on one particular part of the machine. When the other engineers disassembled the machine, they were amazed to find that it was exactly where the problem was. A few days later, the engineers received an invoice from Charlie for $10,000! This was a lot of money in those days, so they returned it to Charlie and ask that he itemize it. A few days later, they received an itemized bill which read: Making one X mark – $1.00 Knowing where to place the X – $9999.00 Even if one tosses the idea that there are "rockstar programmers" who are 10x more productive than merely good ones, someone with the right experience and domain knowledge can be priceless. I have certainly found cases in which I could merely hear the symptoms of a very subtle bug and find it in 2 minutes, whereas a great programmer unfamiliar with the codebase, field, and my past experience might have taken a week to find it.