I think there's a lot of truth here. I would also point out that for a lot of programming tasks, particularly in a corporate IT environment, "thinking like the

I think there's a lot of truth here. I would also point out that for a lot of programming tasks, particularly in a corporate IT environment, "thinking like the customer" can be a good thing: it helps you make sure that you are building something that truly helps the customer do their job. The risk is that no matter how much "domain experience" you have, the customer has more, and you can fool yourself into thinking that you understand what they need better than they do.