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How to recognise a good programmer

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Re: How to recognise a good programmer

#41

Post by gaius »

jcromartie wrote: post #31
DaniFong wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schooling might not work so well as qualification, but take care not to trivialize the problem. You can't really figure out how good someone is until you've worked with them, unless they have a long string of accomplishments. Schooling might be a little above noise, but at least it functions as a fairly reliable minimum bar.

Based on the deluge of resumes I've seen coming into tech shops lately, the bar set by college degrees is so low that you need to dig to find it.

That is why there is the notion of league tables for colleges. My friends with MBAs say quite plainly that unless an MBA is from a "top 25" school, it simply isn't worth doing or having.

Re: How to recognise a good programmer

#42

Post by truebosko »

wallflower wrote: post #12
truebosko wrote: post #3

Everytime I read these kind of articles I see the one glaring headline, how programmers love to work outside of their regular work day Then I become sad because 80% of my week I come home and have to handle something and by the end of it all, I don't have any time to play around (aka, program) because I have to go to bed. Sigh, vicious cycle :( (I know I can work on managing my time better and I am, like cooking more…

Freud was once asked what he though a normal person should be able to do well. The questioner probably expected a complicated, a "deep" answer. But Freud simply said, "Lieben und arbeiten" ("to love and to work"). It pays to ponder on this simple formula; it gets deeper as you think about it. For when Freud said "love", he meant the expansiveness of generosity as well as sexual love; when he said "love and work," he…

Thanks for posting that, it's actually stuck in my head since you did yesterday .. just never got around to posting a reply :)

Re: How to recognise a good programmer

#43

Post by olavk »

Problem is that many of the positive indicators are also present in bad programmers.

My experience is that it is extremely hard to recognize good programmers from bad programmers on the basis of personality traits.

The only think that seems to work is to actually investigate how well they read and write code.

Re: How to recognise a good programmer

#44

Post by Rexxar »

swombat wrote: post #26
DaniFong wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schooling might not work so well as qualification, but take care not to trivialize the problem. You can't really figure out how good someone is until you've worked with them, unless they have a long string of accomplishments. Schooling might be a little above noise, but at least it functions as a fairly reliable minimum bar.

I disagree. I work with a brilliant coder who dropped out of high school.

(A ⇒ B) ⇏ (¬A ⇒ ¬B)

Re: How to recognise a good programmer

#45

Post by aswanson »

gaius wrote: post #41
jcromartie wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the deluge of resumes I've seen coming into tech shops lately, the bar set by college degrees is so low that you need to dig to find it.

That is why there is the notion of league tables for colleges. My friends with MBAs say quite plainly that unless an MBA is from a "top 25" school, it simply isn't worth doing or having.

That leads me to believe it is a bullshit field of study altogether, if the only metric of worth is the school name.

Re: How to recognise a good programmer

#46

Post by gaius »

aswanson wrote: post #45
gaius wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is why there is the notion of league tables for colleges. My friends with MBAs say quite plainly that unless an MBA is from a "top 25" school, it simply isn't worth doing or having.

That leads me to believe it is a bullshit field of study altogether, if the only metric of worth is the school name.

CS graduate from MIT or Podunk U?

Re: How to recognise a good programmer

#47

Post by [deleted] »

raganwald wrote: post #23
hhm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an article for recognizing good programmers, so you can hire them, not for other programmers to admire them.

Exactly. Maybe you are contemptuous of them, but you have a business plan that involves having them work back-breaking hours for some founder's equity you will dilute down to the strength of Budweiser beer. That sounds like sarcasm, but consider the case of salespeople. Many people have trouble liking salespeople, and many people do not admire them. But many businesses would close without good salespeople. So you try…

[deleted]

Re: How to recognise a good programmer

#49

Post by hhm »

pmsaue0 wrote: post #16
hhm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We met with some programmers who were passionate, but were obviously charlatans." And how did you tell the difference? (when it wasn't obvious... or was it always obvious?)

Well, we did hire one charlatan programmer, but we dropped him pretty quick when we realized that he couldn't produce the quality and quantity of work that he claimed possible. Like I said, this was when we didn't know diddly about programming / hiring programmers. Regarding the ones that were obvious (as it seemed to me), they were lingo dropping high-horsers, and when we looked at their previous work and saw that t…

Thanks a lot for taking the time for writing such useful reply.
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