[Sarki]

I agree, what's more important IMHO is education/knowledge of existing data manipulation, after all 99% of the work is reuse not pure creation (incremental vs pure innovation).

Algorithmicians (? - well... algorithm researchers, obviously) and programmers are not working in the same field of work, even though the boundary might seem thin for most, there's a world between both.

Must all painters be artists?

[starbugs]

I would go as far as saying that an "artist" might be detrimental to reaching your goal in a lot of cases, especially if a team is involved.

[mark-r]

To stretch the analogy to the breaking point, you probably don't want an "artist" to paint your living room walls.