TITLE: Programming Everywhere, Business Edition AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford DATE: June 20, 2014 1:27 PM DESC: ----- 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. -----