[s188]

Agreed. I think the professional/unprofessional distinction would have been much better. In this article the term 'amateur is used in a derogatory way, a sort of 'put down', such as one professional referring to another professional colleague as an 'amateur'. It's used in a sense that amateur is bad and professional is good. However it's not unusual for amateurs to be as good as professionals. For instance, major golf tournaments will often invite an amateur as a guest competitor. And so, in this case, the amateur/professional distinction isn't how good they are at playing golf (they're all equally good) - instead it's in the sense of 'is it a full-time career' and 'are earnings derived therefrom'.

Our industry (software dev specifically) is inclined to use put downs in this way. I've often thought the phrase 'code smell' is used as a 'put down', a way of diminishing someone's work in order to make them change what they do (i.e. to be more like some perceived standard). I think the use of that (and other similar derogatory phrases) is unprofessional - which is a tad ironic.

[ivanhoe]

Depends on the area of expertise we're talking about. In sport amateurs absolutely can be as good or better than professional athletes. Musician or painter or programmer, same thing. But a skilled worker in jobs that are all about practice and experience? For instance I can manage to lay a brick wall or put tiles on the wall, but I did it only a few times in my life and I doubt that anyone not doing it professionally can have a significantly more experience than that - you just don't get a chance to do a lot of DIY projects like that - while someone who does that professionally is doing it for many hours a day, every day. That makes a HUGE difference in experience and that translates into the quality and speed. As DIY amateur, even if you come close in the quality, it will certainly take you 10x more time than professional.