Re:Developers needed; Hackers need not apply
by sysop073 on Tuesday July 29, 2008 @11:29AM
(#260601)
I hate the presumption that "real" developers need to know how to distill requirements. That's what you learn in school, but it isn't necessarily true, it depends entirely on where you work. I never talk to customers where I work, and generally for the requirements we decide as developers we do as a group, we don't need to trick non-techs into telling us what they really want. Somebody at every company is going to have to do this, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the developers
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The developers still have to interact with people to figure out what they need to create. The people that they're extracting the information from may still be techies, but determining what you need to build is still key.
And this is where I think the article falls flat on it's face -- In my opinion, I think one of the key features of being a hacker is the ability to look at a situation, analyze what you need to build, and come up with a minimal and elegant solution within the constraints that you determined. That requires communication and analysis.