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by Jemaclus 17 days ago
Sure. But this is a little pedantic, no?

Let's go with your analogy: you would hire contractors to build a house, but not to put an IKEA bookshelf together. You would hire a professional chef to cook a five course meal, but not to heat up pop tarts. You would hire a surgeon to operate on your brain, but not to prescribe advil.

The point is that it's one of many things (tools, contractors, whatever) in your arsenal, and you use whichever one you need. You don't automatically reach for the surgeon or the chef or the contractor.

1 comments

But the thing is, in this analogy, we are the chef, surgeon, or builder. We're the ones other people look for when they can't do the thing by themselves (in this case, writing software).

Neither my analogy or yours is exact, but it's really worth thinking about.

Right. But OP's question isn't "do you need a chef?" the question OP posed is more akin to "why should chefs use knives when they have blenders?" or "why should I build an IKEA bookshelf myself when I can hire a contractor to build a house?"

Because they're two different tools and situations.