Everyone should learn to code…

Picked up on a theme floating around on Twitter which lead to this blog post:

The post was clearly a response to this exchange on Twitter:

Developers shouldn’t have to understand the business?

At some level this feels like the correct viewpoint - of course, developers should understand and care deeply about the business!?Sure, sometimes I just need a plumber, but it helps if they can help me understand why that location for the toilet won't solve my shower problem. Just knowing how to solder pipes is ignoring the glaring problem!

This morning I was reading this post from John Cutler (whom you should totally follow BTW):

It made me start to reconsider whether it is wrong to only want to focus on one aspect? There is a common sentiment in the tech/software world that “Everyone should learn to code…”, “A good product manager should be technical”, or “Everyone should start a business!”, and so on. These are people who have found a particular aspect of a problem that they love and end up thinking that is the right place to focus.?

There are a lot of different kinds of people who get joy from solving different kinds of problems. Some people are happy soldering and solving problems in that space - how to fit into tight spaces, the right kinds of joints for different situations, etc. There can be plenty of rewarding problems to keep you satisfied at that level. Then, there are people (probably myself included) who like to work at different levels and get frustrated when other people expect you to stay in your lane. You are handed a problem to solve, yet so many assumptions are already baked in. Over time, you are trained to focus on specific aspects.?(Though I’ve also tried running my own business and hated it!)

I feel it’s a little unfair to expect everyone to get joy from the same things or even give the same importance to all aspects of a problem. Great teams contain a mix of these different outlooks. Maybe the problem lies in how organizations tend to define roles/silos as responsible for a particular level of problem definition. If we included more people in the “problem defining” stage, or reconfigure our notion of “team” maybe this perception would begin to change? At the very least, being exposed to different ways of thinking about a problem should be helpful to everyone.?

Then again… am I just restating the original assumption?