[kenjackson]

Of course QA knows how to program. But their skillset is about breaking code. It's about writing this crazy C++ function that shows how your API has a security bug in this case. As developers their like dev tools developers as their customers are generally devs.

Skillset maybe isn't the right word... mindset maybe better word. Both should be good programmers -- in fact you'll often have more test code than product code. But you likely won't be able to switch your dev team to QA and vice-versa and get the same results.

[arosien]

You're lucky to have QA people who know C++, I've never met one. Maybe I've been in too many web-oriented startups.