The best programmers I know

Maybe this article could be improved by adding “Domain/Business knowledge” and understanding what the business and product actually do. It doesn’t matter if you are a good developer if you are not able to provide solutions because you lack domain knowledge. Depending on the domain it can take quite some time to be a reference

You can work closely with people who have the domain knowledge who work closely with programmers to do this. I have had a job where a major part of it (as well as creating specs etc) was to do this.

Of course the developers still needed some domain knowledge, but much less.

I don't know, I would say that's a quality of engineers, not programmers.

Those can be two different things in the same way a sous chef might be much more proficient at cooking/preparing several dishes but not have the skills to create a menu and run a successful cuisine in a successful restaurant/hotel.