Comment by badkitten
11 years ago
Of course there is. Software developers (in general) are smarter and have had better educations than "average" people.
Most smart, educated people I know can name the vice president of the United States, and I don't even live in the US. I think it's completely unreasonable for someone not to know who the vice president of the country they live in is.
The corner office in the earlier example depends on the software being written to make money. If the software is bad, they will make less money.
By and large, knowing the vice president's name will not cause any appreciable dip or rise in how much money a company makes.
So, in the context of 'why is it important for business people who's livelihoods partially depend on code to know what code is?' not knowing what programmers do is worse than not knowing the vice president's name
Regarding you and your acquaintances' knowledge of who the vice president of the US is, I think that's probably contextual knowledge. For example, I wouldn't be surprised if many of them doesn't know who the premier of China is, the second in power of a country arguably on the same power and influence scale as the US.