[david.avery]

Hey! IMO, there are developers and programmers. Developers know the right way to get stuff to fit together, fast, on budget, and in a way to put money into their pockets, with which they buy cool toys.

Programmers are more of the type you describe; the hard-core, academics that argue over which construct saves cpu cycles with 1 million iterations. These are the guys that don't get laid as often as they should, and not the types of guys that would even be on this forum. These guys do not belong ever talking to customers.

I am a classic SW dev, build web-based apps and design complex database schemas for the fortune 1000. I just wrote a cool little EDI agent in less than a month to interface a good customer with Home depot, saving them 15 hours of human time every week punching orders. Put enough to buy a used carrera into my pocket, and will pay for itself in less than a year.... AND I worked directly with the customers, without scaring them.