"I don’t want 10 developers. I want 3 great ones", is what a client told me when I asked him how his company was responding to the economic crisis. Of course, I think this is good advice even in good times and I think we have gotten away from this is recent years. Why? I think there are couple of reasons:

  1. Outsourcing changed the focus from finding great developers to hiring large numbers of developers.
  2. Project managers and business analysts worked their darndest to separate developers from the business problems that develoeprs need to solve. Agile has mitigated this a bit, but treating developers like machines on an assembly has been in fashion for years now.
  3. There are fewer great developers because back in the day people passionate about software development gravitated towards a career in application development. Now it is a career choice for many and percentage of great developers has been diluted and thus they are harder to find.

I am asking every application development professional I talk to, including you, the following questions:

  1. Compared to 5 years ago, is application development less difficult, same level of difficulty, or more difficult?
  2. What qualities make a great application developer?
  3. What is an example of a great developer in action?

Please let me know your answers. Thanks. Mike.