The latest popular ‘programming article on a blog’ is “Developers are from Mars, Programmers are from Venus”, which, mind my language, is a piece of crap, obviously written by somebody who is an application developer. It is so full of stereotypes that it leaves me wonder if the author has some kind of grudge against someone else who happens to have a better paying job because his technical background is better than the average knowledge of the article’s author. Accidently that covers the difference in this industry: one is called ‘senior programmer’ the other one is called ‘junior programmer’.
In an organization, you need the people who know what they’re talking about and, who above all, can easily adapt, switch programming languages, teach themselves new things. Their love for programming does not just start at 9 and ends at 5. They know the limitations of enviroments and will tell you exactly that: up front, too. And most likely, their sense of ‘arrogance’ is just their over-confidence, as in, ‘I’ve seen this before. I’m on it’. If they can communicate with users, well, that is a plus, but you surely don’t want your programmers to ‘milkman’ around. That’s obviously a job for the coffee man or lady.