It may be personality, but this self-taught developer focused on work ethic — that is, while I lacked seeing the "Big Picture" in technical terms (understanding

It may be personality, but this self-taught developer focused on work ethic — that is, while I lacked seeing the "Big Picture" in technical terms (understanding how all the pieces fit together) I strove nonetheless to make up for it by being the most prolific engineer on the team. I'm not saying it's the better approach but I would often prototype two or three designs (in a few days) to a point where we could evaluate their shortcomings, test performance, etc. Engineers with a CS degree were more likely to spend that time white-boarding and write the code once. Since I cannot remember a time when the two approaches were taken on the same task, I cannot say whether the final product was better in one case vs. the other. To my (pragmatic) mind though, my approach was already battle-tested to some degree. (Or rather it was battle-tested against other approaches that ultimately lost out — the CS approach was simple understood to be the ideal approach.) But let me also be clear: I benefited and learned a great deal by working with CS majors. Fortunately there were a few engineers I worked with that were happy to mentor me (starting with you, David). I think though, perhaps after ten years in the field, experience ends up erasing any real differences in how any engineer might have begun their career. In time I was more likely to take the Right Approach on the first go and the CS major too would give the whiteboard only a passing thought as they too might go straight to the approach that they now "intuitively" knew was the Right One. I'm likely generalizing though — and perhaps my impressions are also colored by what I want to believe is true (so romanticizing a bit as well). Perhaps others will chime in to refute or echo my sentiments.