TITLE: Programming Everywhere, Business Edition
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: June 20, 2014 1:27 PM
DESC:
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BODY:
Q: What do you call a company that has staff members
with "programmer" or "software developer" in their titles?
A: A company.
Back in 2012, Alex Payne wrote
What Is and Is Not A Technology Company
to address a variety of issues related to the confounding of
companies that sell technology with companies that
merely use technology to sell something else. Even
then, developing technology in house was a potential source
of competitive advantage for many businesses, whether that
involved modifying existing software or writing new.
The competitive value in being able to adapt and create
software is only larger and more significant in the last two
years. Not having someone on staff with "programmer"
in the title is almost a red flag even for non-tech companies
these days.
Those programmers aren't likely to have been CS majors in
college, though. We don't produce enough. So we need to find
a way to convince more non-majors to learn a little programming.
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