Even better is getting a programmer that knows enough about making X to not attempt to implement it. Anyway the programming is such a multi-dimensional evaluat

Even better is getting a programmer that knows enough about making X to not attempt to implement it. Anyway the programming is such a multi-dimensional evaluation problem that you're just as wrong as you are right. Think about it - there are so many things programmer SHOULD KNOW it isn't possible to know them all. Let's name them some of them - good architecture style, good API writing skills, good code writing style, good documentation style, company's internal workflow with all its nuances, compiler standards, compiler optimization, non-standard compiler behavior, version control system API, version control innards, database system, file system, low level operating system implementation, kernel innards, non-standard OS behavior, hardware knowledge, driver knowledge, non-standard hardware behavior, hardware compatibility, software-hardware compatibility, etc. (This doesn't cover assembler knowledge, binary represntation of important formats). You simply have to choose to not learn everything about certain system to be good at other things.