@vacri:
you make the same mistake as Luke: you mix knowledge of the tool with knowledge of the job domain. If a programmer is better because he knows the intestines of his computer (whatever brand, CPU etc.) then it belongs to his job domain, i.e. his professional skills.
If he would require hardware knowledge to fix the PC on his own then either he is in a very small company and needs to do it himself, or his employer is really bad on people’s tools. Even then he works a different role: he’s not the programmer doing the job, he’s the service guy to fix the PC, but they do different jobs for different reasons. When he’s finished fixing the PC he can return to his job role working on software and algorithms. If he’s an SQL programmer he needs to understand innards of the RDBMS system (maybe upto tuning the RDBMS and OS, maybe he’s got a colleague RDBMS admin who’s better at this particular job), but not the graphics card in the server. See the difference?

Anyway: a developer of course needs to understand hardware if it belongs to his assigned task (or job, more generally speaking). No disagreement there, I’m totally convinced that this is necessary ;). Anything else is just bells and whistles. It might make me a better geek if I know the insides, but if it’s not a prerequisite for the job: who cares if I know it or not? (ok, apart from you in this discussion to prove me wrong) ;)

@ths

That’s fine, we can disagree. But your 20 years of experience does not mean that I haven’t witnessed programmers who have run into trouble because they don’t know what’s going on inside their box. You’ve run into the fallacy of saying ‘because I haven’t personally seen or experienced it, it can’t be true’.

@Dan – I tried that t-shirt. It doesn’t work. In fact it had a directly opposite effect. Everyone who read it felt compelled to tell me about their computer problems.

@Lore – don’t forget that we also have a truckload of people who went into CS during the .com boom lured by the easy money despite abhorring or being afraid of technology.

@Luke – Haha, yea I know. That might make a good t-shirt. Although I am sure we have all seen the “No, I won’t fix your computer” design.

@Gravatar – Sad but true. LOL@UML+VS.

There’s also a physicist’s version of this phenomenon: “You as a physicist have to know how this toaster/microwave/chemical thingy (!)/… works. So please explain it to us!”

I believe that there are two kinds of computer scientists. The “nerd computer scientist” and the “World of Warcraft computer scientist”. The latter seem to be the majority at my university. “Oh, I was good at Quake in my high school days so I decided to study computer ga.. ah computer science.” These guys simply love the “good products of the market leader” and their favourite game nowadays is buzzword bingo. If a new guy enters my workgroup and he has studied computer science, all alarm bells are ringing. The chances are could, that he will destroy our work with some bloody UML derived bloated overobject-oriented code using “Microsoft Visual Studio 2007 Architect edition ™”.

There are the nerdy ones, the good ones. They know the machines, they know the algorithms, they know the math. I love them. But in general a “computer scientist” is an other world for “this guy has no clue of anything except MS Windows Server Edition 200X and will destroy my work completely.” And, I will have to fix his windows too.

@Dan – “say no to n00bs” sounds like one of those anti-drug an add campaigns on TV. Like:

Whenever a n00b walks up to me and asks me to fix their computer I say:

“Pshh, bitch please! I use Linux”

Linux is my anti-n00b.

@ths – ok, good point – you are right. I don’t have a counter argument to this.

@vacri:

I can live with your disagreement. I’m in the job for more than 20 years, and I could have survived without any hardware knowledge.

@Luke: “good grasp on technology / developer who needs to call IT every 5 minutes”

you mix knowledge of the tools with knowledge of the field of expertise. I don’t need to know anything about hardware to develop algorithms or design multi-tier applications (webserver applicationserver RDBMS server LDAP server etc.). If I need to call a helpdesk this is because my tools don’t work. Helpdesk won’t design my application or help me out with debugging my software. Tools are the responsibility of my employer, and there are experts to repair if something’s broken (e.g. my version control server). If I start to fix things on my own I’d break the workflow processes and the documentation tools (if I have the privileges at all, like e.g. root on some server).

@Luke – You can adjust due to relationships but market value would be anywhere from 40-150 USD per hour depending on the exact work. I know that is a huge range but as you know there is a huge range of work to be done and many places to turn. Networking, hardware upgrades, spyware cleaning, device setup (including peripherals like iPods, cell phones, crackberry/pdas. The higher rates would more likely be website creation (including some basic web dev) and small business LAN work. All the basics, and all very easy for people like us.

If you want to make sure you are compensated to go through the pain of helping some newb fix his virus ridden POS then charge accordingly. Now you could always go flat rate on things like data recovery etc. Geeksquad charges 290 USD to even begin a “backup” due to the possibility of data loss and liability. They also have an average of around 120 an hour. These rates seem like “you gonna get raped®” style service.

If you do decide to help people out make sure you can trust them , as they could take action against you if they feel unhappy. They could for instance, claim you broke something when you did not. They may be ignorant enough to think they are right! This is part of the reason some corps have lengthy contracts and high fees. For family, I go free and extended family , dirt cheap or barter. Just make sure you get something so you do not begin to resent people who do not deserve your efforts for nothing. You must defend your free time from freeloaders somehow but the most logical option in many cases is to “just say no” to n00bs.

@Matt – I never know how much to charge people either. When you do fix someones computer and they offer to pay, how much do you take? I mean, in most cases it’s not hard work – just tedious, and often boring.

@ths ok, but don’t you agree that developer with good grasp on technology > developer who needs to call IT every 5 minutes. I’m not saying the guy needs to be an expert. But some knowledge helps.

For example, I would probably not hire a developer to be a sysadmin, because it’s not his specialty. Still, it helps if he knows and understands what a sysadmin does and he can work along side the IT team to help solve complex hardware/software issues instead of just whining that shit is not working and refusing to write down error messages or perform troubleshooting steps out of fear things will break.

@hdw – oh wow! Didn’t even realize that its so bad of you guys too. I always thought that graphic design was synonymous with Photoshop in public mind – which is I guess a fair assumption. But Word? Ugh! :P