I agree with most of this well-written post. However, I think this deserves consideration: some percentage of those posters are not, will not, and do not want t

I agree with most of this well-written post. However, I think this deserves consideration: some percentage of those posters are not, will not, and do not want to be developers. They may be the accountant who is the designated "IT guy" in the office because he is able to unjam the printer or the office assistant/intern who is being given the "do this miscellaneous stuff we don't understand" task and has no idea where to even begin. It may be hard to believe in this day and age, but there are still companies out there that have no idea that they even need real technical help (and might not be able to pay for it if they did.) Some of you who have done freelance custom software development work for small/long-lived businesses trying to come into the modern world may have seen this phenomenon (I've seen it plenty of times when I freelanced regularly.) The examples used in the post may not fit this, but plenty of SO questions I've read could fit this pattern. If we /were/ able to be truly frank about it, we would perhaps suggest that they talk to their boss about hiring a professional developer (or Sysadmin, in the case of Server Fault) to do the job that they've been unwillingly thrown into. (edit: There's perhaps a great opportunity to connect small businesses with freelance developers/custom dev shops buried in here somewhere.)