Convincing the Boss to Pay for Developer Training

I was quoted in that article and to clarify my response, it was based on my personal experiences and also on the Joel Spolsky article: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FiveWorlds.html (I provided the author with the link to it.)

Truthfully, most great programmers really do not need formal "training" focused on a specific technology in the sense that they will more likely learn on their own by creating and working on a side project specifically for that purpose.

I will make the distinction that training in this context means something like a course titled "Learn .NET development in only six weeks" versus a broader education as in earning a CS degree. Great programmers can probably learn more on their own than spending time taking a training course, but they could benefit from a few CS courses focused on more general computing fundamentals and concepts.

No offense, but this is one great thing about where I work at now. My boss encourages me to seek out new things to learn and foots the bill.