[DigitalSea]

"A designer with no experience in development has a higher chance of creating a design that's difficult to implement."

It's better to educate the designers yourself than have them educate themselves because it's not guaranteed they won't still ask for a design that's borderline impossible to be cut up by tomorrow. The place I work at the designers design and the developers develop and it works great for us. The designers liaison with the developers throughout the entire process, it's not a simple matter of letting the designers have free reign and then expect you to develop it. I might be one of the lucky few, but this is how all places should work. Designers and developers should sit together not be isolated from one another and only speak via a project manager which is how it seems to be at a lot of places. It's an us vs them mentality in the industry.

A lot of places I've worked prior to the place I've been working for a few years now have had this mentality that the designers know best. While a designer who understands what is possible is a viable asset, a designer who considers themselves a developer and gets in the way of the process to the point they're telling the developers what to do is counter-productive rather than working with the developers not against them and vice-versa.

I've encountered hybrids who have adequately been able to do both development and design, not in an advanced capacity but I've encountered lots of designers and developers who can easily design and knock up a Wordpress theme, however I've never come across a designer/developer who can design a complicated interface for a web application and be able to build it as well. I could be wrong and I don't doubt there are some super-talented people out there capable, but I see too many advertisements for hybrids that assume they're as common as trees in a forest.