[geebee]

software is an interesting business, in that you don't have to ask anyone's permission, and there's no real way to know if someone is a real programmer, a fake programmer, or a non-programmer aside from looking at the code and applications they have written/created.

Does it make sense to speak of "non-programmers who write software?" In some ways, it seems like the act of writing software is exactly what makes a person a programmer.

I'm not trying to play games here - I do understand what the writer here is getting at. People who have no background in software, somehow muddling their way into an application, for better or for worse.

But after a while, that ballet dancer who wrote his own ticketing app, or that lawyer who wrote his own billing app,... they become programmers. Maybe bad ones, but programmers nonetheless.