>>No, they are not. A good developer is someone who, by virtue of the fact that he or she has to write software whose theoretical underpinnings are rooted in CS

>>No, they are not. A good developer is someone who, by virtue of the fact that he or she has to write software whose theoretical underpinnings are rooted in CS, must be good in CS as well. It depends on the problem domain. Most problems solved by software developers today do not require a CS background, or even any technical background. Just like in other fields, we have the advantage of building on the shoulders of giants. A smart person invents Ruby, another smart person builds Rails on top of that, and the next thing you know, a ton of people are writing web apps. This doesn't mean that the web app developers are "bad" developers. It just means they can focus on other types of problems.