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Comment by gregjor | Hacker News Reader

Improving communication skills and listening to customers. I see my goal as a developer to deliver business value, not to try to write perfect code. One has to balance delivering value on time with code quality, but too often I see developers focusing on technical skills as if code had a value in itself.

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I'm experiencing something similar. I'm having to learn to understand why the customer wants something and avoid just giving them what they want. Often what they want is not the simplest solution to the problem the want to solve. Sometimes you almost need to understand their operation as well as they do just to ensure you're delivering business value and not just adding features and complexity that will eventually choke the ability to change.

Exactly. That’s a skill that in the long run has more value than learning another programming language. I freelance so I have a big interest in establishing long-term relationships and getting referrals. You get that from trust and understanding the customer’s business requirements.

No business ever has the requirement “We need 2,000 more lines of Javascript by next month” but you wouldn’t know that just listening to programmers.

what are you programming in?

I freelance taking over failing and failed projects, rarely do new development, so I’m programming in whatever my customers have. PHP, JavaScript, MySQL, Python, sometimes Ruby or C#. I also do lots of Linux system admin.

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