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Developers Are Not Commodities - Individual Developers Make A Difference
The quality of the developer matters
“What matters is not ideas, but the people who have them. Good people can fix bad ideas, but good ideas can’t save bad people.” Paul Graham
Developers may have the same technical skills, similar CVs but the difference between a good developer and bad one is huge.
All developers are not the same, you can’t just swap one with another.
Good developers are expensive, but the work bad developers do will end up costing more.
The quality of the developer matters as much as their technical skills. There is a big difference between a good developer and a bad developer, but their CV’s will look similar.
Developers don’t learn technical skills in weeks. It takes years to get deep knowledge, experience and skills in a particular technology.
Developers are not a commodity
It’s easy to think creating software as a technical problem that needs a technical person to fix.
When you view something as a commodity, the only difference between developers is price. If all developers do roughly the same thing then cheaper is better.
Like buying the home brand washing up liquid, all washing up liquids work fine, so paying less will get the job done and save me money.
The people who think like this and put any developer on a project find out it’s not true. Each language or service needs someone who is an expert in that specific area.
You would get a car mechanic to fix a plan or a vet to operate on a person. Would you!
Development is a skill, skills are learnt through using the skill. When you start, you make mistakes and you have successes. You find out the hard way what works and what doesn’t. This is experience, it helps you avoid mistakes and have the right approach more often.
Without experience the people on the project make mistakes whilst they learn. They might not find the best way on that project.
