Just about anyone writing code in this industry can learn to implement, given a blueprint. Not everyone can learn to generate the blueprint. The former takes so

Just about anyone writing code in this industry can learn to implement, given a blueprint. Not everyone can learn to generate the blueprint. The former takes some marginal ability to memorize facts and to recognize patterns. The latter takes the ability to truly understand a problem and orchestrate the pieces of a solution together, some of which will be tasks ("clear goals") for a coder to implement. It's the (or at least one) difference between perpetually solving homework from CS and being an engineer. Can't speak for GP, but my view is the latter can't be accomplished without some direct, in person interaction today. The future, with more robust collaboration tools, may be different.