This is not high school anymore and this issue is valid everywhere where people are involved not just with software companies and programmers. The last company I worked for valued the communication better than developer skills and almost all of them talked their way up to some management position. We ended up with only 2-3 developers that could not do much of the work they’ve promissed to the clients. Soon all the developers left and they are now just a bunch of “managers” that hire programmers over the internet and intermediate $200 projects. That’s a way of doing business too I guess. I’d rather stick to skills.

People with view #1 are hopeless and illogical.

People in camp #2 are just holding a strawman opposition. One can write “comments” and well-factored code and not be the elusive unicorn that is a “good communicator.” That’s just silly.

If you felt that programming was really just “communicating with the machine” and that it was communication that was really important, you’re view is a bit odd. You should really be hiring poets and English professors to be your programmers since, presumably, they are some of the best communicators. Nevermind that these people have not programmed, since programming is “just communication” they will, by definition, know how to communicate with the machine well. That is the implication of the argument.

No, I don’t think it should matter if English is your native language or not. As I see it if you want to work for a company that writes code/documentation in English then you need good English skills, otherwise I’d look for someone else. End of story.

Programming is communicating, just a different kind to say a novel, which is generally targeted at emotions. From The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs – “Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.”

It’s one thing to have awesome formal logic skills, but it’s totally useless if no-one can understand it.

“If, on the other hand, you had a brilliant programmer with good communication skills, versus a good programmer with brilliant communication skills, I would take the brilliant programmer 100 times out of 100. That’s the point here.”

Well, I would actually take the brilliant communicator. In general programming now is more about understandability now, as opposed to super fast programs. As I see it a good communicator is able to write understandable code. If people are assuming a good programmer does this then I think we need a clearer definition of what good programming involves.

First of all, programming skills have nothing to do with communication skills. The notion that writing code is communicating with the CPU/compiler is ridiculous. The term “communication skills” refers to “interpersonal communication skills”, i. e. the ability to detect and influence other people’s emotions and thoughts. Coding is formalizing functionality. Interpersonal communication is INFORMAL and is related to EMOTIONS. Writing code, however, is FORMAL and it is related to LOGIC. In order to be a good programmer, you need strong ABSTRACT and FORMAL thinking, the direct opposite of what you need to be a good communicator. If communication really is the most important thing in programming, why aren’t good writers and actors kick-ass programmers? Because knowing Shakespeare won’t help them write template metafunctions or design compilcated class hierarchies.

Many of you seem to confuse poor communication skills with arrogance and uncooperativeness. Dudes, being a poor communicator doesn’t make you uncooperative or unpleasant to be with.

Another thing is that throwing out resumes with mistakes is not proficiency but a pretty obvious sign of being a retard. What if English is not one’s native language? Does that make him/her a poor communicator/programmer? Come on.

First, communication skills are a valid way to view one’s communication with the computer, with code as the language. I know several human languages, and I find that that background helps me learn new programming languages and new language concepts quickly. It’s all about expressing concepts in different ways.

Second, as BobJ said, part of communication in code is to the code’s next maintainer. That can be in the form of algorithms or even something as mundane as accurate variable names and code comments. I have spent weeks at a time deciphering undocumented and/or inaccurately documented code with terrible variable names. At one point, when the next person took over, he said one particular module was an example of some of the best-documented code he’d seen

Finally, when employers ask for excellent communication skills, I think they are simply hoping to get someone who knows how to explain things to them. Sadly, the limitation is often on the receiving end and can’t be addressed by the programmer