Programming is too important to be left to programmers. -- apologies to Clemenceau I think it's possible to make productive use of programming without claiming

Programming is too important to be left to programmers. -- apologies to Clemenceau I think it's possible to make productive use of programming without claiming to be developing software by which I mean, programs that are expected to be placed into long term or widespread use. That's what we did with programming in BASIC, 40 years ago. As a scientist, I use programming for things like modeling, data analysis, lab automation, algorithm prototyping, and so forth. You folks all know why. I'm not going to sacrifice that power just because I don't develop full blown software. Scientists programmed before there was a software industry. If something that I create threatens to end up in a product, it gets handed to the software department. We can hire an army of programmers. Granted, there is a widely known problem with this approach. A program can evolve to the point where it's really "too big" for a non-developer to manage, but "too small" to justify the cost of spinning up a software development project in a typical organization. I don't have a good solution for that problem.