Well, I really mean that in spite of whatever you do to improve yourself as a developer/engineer, it doesn't mean a thing if you don't have a User. Ever.

And even if Developers can themselves be Users, in the sense that they gain some sort of joy out of consuming the developer tools of the trade, its still just navel-gazing until there is actually some sort of use out of the activity.

Real developers build things for users. It doesn't matter how good or bad they are, as developers, if there is a User: win.