> For me ability to code (like knowledge of programming language) is a necessary but relatively minor ability of a good software developer.
Absolutely. I have been in tech since the eighties and it’s remarkable to me how all the other skills that used to be necessary to create quality systems have seemingly taken a backseat to this skill. There are far to many developers with a severe lack of good engineering and troubleshooting capabilities nowadays…but boy are they fluent in the language de jour
I think to a certain degree it’s just an innate capacity for creativity coupled with logic that gets refined in practice. If you don’t have those core components in you you are pretty much at a disadvantage to develop them.
To be honest in the last 10-15 years with the shift to Agile it really feels like the type of folks who become software devs prior to that shift represent about 15-20% of the new devs now. The rest are kind of just commodity devs. Give them good detailed requirements and they can churn out code. That 15-20% are the ones who can churn out something without a hyper level of detail or refined requirements.
Absolutely. I have been in tech since the eighties and it’s remarkable to me how all the other skills that used to be necessary to create quality systems have seemingly taken a backseat to this skill. There are far to many developers with a severe lack of good engineering and troubleshooting capabilities nowadays…but boy are they fluent in the language de jour