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I apologize if this seems harsh but I am highly skeptical that someone who is "not a developer", and by this I understand you to mean that you have never done s

by tgflynn 16y ago

I apologize if this seems harsh but I am highly skeptical that someone who is "not a developer", and by this I understand you to mean that you have never done software development in your career, is qualified to design large systems and networks. I don't think that such a person could have a deep enough understanding of the technology to do a good job performing the tasks he purports to. As for likening developers to "contractors who pounds the nail" that tells me that you have very little understanding of the nature of software development.

j_baker 16y ago
> I apologize if this seems harsh but I am highly skeptical that someone who is "not a developer", and by this I understand you to mean that you have never done software development in your career, is qualified to design large systems and networks. Don't sysadmins and network admins design large systems and networks? Sorry, but programmers don't have a monopoly on technical complexity. > As for likening developers to "contractors who pounds the nail" that tells me that you have very little understanding of the nature of software development. Is that not the point of the argument he is arguing against though? It seems to be saying that "Developers pound the nail, and pounding the nail is the most important part".
- tgflynn 16y ago
  Sorry, but programmers don't have a monopoly on technical complexity. Actually we pretty much do. These days anything really complex can only be effectively analyzed and managed with code. That's why biologists, economists, political scientists and even journalists are finding they need coding skills to do their jobs (which isn't to say that coding skills alone are sufficient, domain knowledge is essential as well). As for sysadmins I've heard it's pretty difficult for people without coding skills to get sysadmin jobs at cutting edge companies like Google. One big reason is that to perform those jobs efficiently you need to be able to automate tasks, and that requires coding in some form. I also think that having worked with the API's and having implemented at least some sort of semi-non-trivial piece of code, say a simple network client/server pair gives one a depth of understanding of the technology that really can't be obtained in any other way.

by tgflynn 16y ago

j_baker 16y ago

> I apologize if this seems harsh but I am highly skeptical that someone who is "not a developer", and by this I understand you to mean that you have never done software development in your career, is qualified to design large systems and networks. Don't sysadmins and network admins design large systems and networks? Sorry, but programmers don't have a monopoly on technical complexity. > As for likening developers to "contractors who pounds the nail" that tells me that you have very little understanding of the nature of software development. Is that not the point of the argument he is arguing against though? It seems to be saying that "Developers pound the nail, and pounding the nail is the most important part".

tgflynn 16y ago
Sorry, but programmers don't have a monopoly on technical complexity. Actually we pretty much do. These days anything really complex can only be effectively analyzed and managed with code. That's why biologists, economists, political scientists and even journalists are finding they need coding skills to do their jobs (which isn't to say that coding skills alone are sufficient, domain knowledge is essential as well). As for sysadmins I've heard it's pretty difficult for people without coding skills to get sysadmin jobs at cutting edge companies like Google. One big reason is that to perform those jobs efficiently you need to be able to automate tasks, and that requires coding in some form. I also think that having worked with the API's and having implemented at least some sort of semi-non-trivial piece of code, say a simple network client/server pair gives one a depth of understanding of the technology that really can't be obtained in any other way.