Interesting point of view. I've had the... luxury... of sitting with end users and I certainly agree with your statement that it produces better software. However, I couldn't see sitting with them all day long, unless the projects themselves were fairly small. I fear that I'd never get anything done, because once the users figure out that you can magically make the software do whatever it needs to, they'll be asking for the moon. Pushing back would only get you so far, I think.

I sit in an office with a pretty fantastic programmer and I've certainly benefited from his knowledge, though I can certainly relate to "I don't care about your problems, I have my own."!