I've been watching Coding 101 with Fr. Robert Ballecer on TWiT TV and on this episode 94 he briefly discussed with other IT professionals on how a former Microsoft programmer, Mike Borozdin, put out a article that was published by Life Hacker talking about the skills that you would want out of a professional programmer. The former Microsoft programmer stated in the article that the most important skill in addition to programming is knowing how to write. He stated that part of being a good programmer is knowing how to express yourself in writing. This is important because programmers will need to know how to explain a program to managers, developers, users, and clients in writing, and the more skillful a programmer is at writing the better.
When this topic was discussed on this podcast show, everyone on the show agreed that being able to communicate clearly and effectively is vital to any professional programmers success. They stated that as their careers grew as a professional programmer, they found themselves spending more time communicating and interacting with others. They all stated that being able to communicate clearly and effectively during the interview process is just as important as knowing how to program.
In my opinion, I think that knowing how to program is just half of what potential employers are looking for and the other half is having the soft skills, including effective communication both oral and written. This Coding 101 episode further proved how valuable soft skills are in the IT field. What are your thoughts?
