Posted by Steve on 08/11/05 13:52

On Wed, 10 Aug 2005 16:19:39 -0700, NC wrote:

> rik wrote:
>>
>> What would people consider to be the difference between being a decent
>> PHP programmer and being an excellent/advanced developer?
>
> Domain expertise, in my opinion. Say, I need an option pricing
> calculator and ask a programmer to write one. A decent programmer
> replies, "What's option pricing?"; an excellent programmer asks a
> clarifying question, "Do you want Black-Scholes or binomial?"
>
> Obviously, this means that excellence is domain-specific; a
> programmer who is excellent in finance applications may not
> necessarily be excellent when it comes to, say, healthcare
> applications...
>
> Cheers,
> NC

B*llocks!

There's an analysis phase to every project. An excellent programmer need
know nothing about the application. They implement the design. No more, no
less. An excellent developer implements it quickly, succinctly, and in a
manner that's easy to modify when the analysis phase shows that it's
failed to understand the customers requirements - which always happens
because the customer doesn't actually know what they want.

Just 'cos Bill and his Visual suite offered the option to drop the
analysis phase and skip straight to a ( unmaintainable,
unstructured, uneverything ) solution doesn't mean he's right! Development
of a project of any size requires many different skillsets, which are
never found in a single person.

Unless it's me, of course (:

Steve

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