Quote:
Originally Posted by LoveThee
What about the bussiness domain? I keep hearing that good programmers are not those that produce godly code, but the ones who understand the business they are developing for and how development works.
These are not mutually exclusive. It's hard to make good technical decisions without understanding business needs. Design, even technical design, is a series of trade-offs and properly navigating through them requires business insight. It doesn't do a lot of good to produce reams of beautiful code that don't solve business problems - that's a liability, not an asset. At the same time, understanding business needs doesn't make you a good programmer by itself - you still have to be able to code and be able to make sense of business needs in the context of software development.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bravos1
Nope... I keep my developers away from the business for the most part. This is why you hire good technical BSAs
Having this kind of process is generally unattractive for good developers. The good ones aren't going to want to work in a situation where they are in the dark in regards to actual business needs and are simply told implement the architecture and design as laid out by architects who don't code.
This is a pretty good talk by Steve McConnell somewhat related to this topic:
GTAC 2011: Closing Keynote - Secrets of World Class Software Organizations
The whole talk is worth watching but I really like his answer to the question about what to do with developers who aren't interested in business (from 49:22 to 52:45)