>> In his "Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series, Douglas Adams  defines
three groups of people: Group A, Group B, and Group C.  Group  A people are
all the thinkers in a society.  Group C people are all  the doers in a
society.  Group B people are all the middlemen in a  society who really don't
contribute anything, people like used car  salesmen, accountants, and oddly
enough, hair-dressers.  I was just  wondering if computer programmers were
Group B people? <<

I don't think Douglas Adams thinks so. Consider this, from _Dirk Gently's
Holistic Detective Agency_  (1987): 

" '... if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and
explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your own mind.
And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things
down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of
programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little
steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've certainly learned
something about it yourself.' "

The speaker is a computer programmer who owns six Macintoshes, so you _know_
he knows what he's talking about.

I've actually been looking for an excuse to quote this passage on the list
ever since I reread the book last month :-)