I agree. When you're planning to invade Iraq, you need people who shoot well, and you need people who have been to Iraq before. They don't have to be the same people, though.
We had a great experience at one of our contract jobs: we found a smart math student with no webdev experience, and he did most of the programming while I constantly consulted him on "platform issues" and jumped in to code any tricky parts he had problems with. He became a competent webdev in about two months - way faster than it took me to learn this stuff by myself - then I handed the project over to him and left. I wonder why other employers don't do this more: mix experienced programmers with smart newbies who come from hard-science backgrounds. Seems to be a winning combination.
We had a great experience at one of our contract jobs: we found a smart math student with no webdev experience, and he did most of the programming while I constantly consulted him on "platform issues" and jumped in to code any tricky parts he had problems with. He became a competent webdev in about two months - way faster than it took me to learn this stuff by myself - then I handed the project over to him and left. I wonder why other employers don't do this more: mix experienced programmers with smart newbies who come from hard-science backgrounds. Seems to be a winning combination.