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The case for language agnostic hiring

alphalist.com

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Re: The case for language agnostic hiring

#81

Post by goatlover »

sarchertech wrote: post #69
_tardigrade wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have CS degree but I do have 7 years commercial experience with Python/Django Rest Framework and I have no idea how pointers work.

If you need to understand what Python is doing under the hood, you’ll have to have some understanding of pointers. Not having a decent mental model of what’s happening a few levels below severely limits the kinda of problems you can solve.

What sort of problems would you need to be doing in Python that aren't already done by libraries like NumPy which would require that sort of mental model?

Re: The case for language agnostic hiring

#82

Post by hnfong »

sarchertech wrote: post #69
_tardigrade wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have CS degree but I do have 7 years commercial experience with Python/Django Rest Framework and I have no idea how pointers work.

If you need to understand what Python is doing under the hood, you’ll have to have some understanding of pointers. Not having a decent mental model of what’s happening a few levels below severely limits the kinda of problems you can solve.

That's a bit harsh.

I'm familiar with C/C++ and how pointers work, but that part of my mental knowledge never comes into play when I write python code, whether Django or not. And I've written substantial code in these two environments, they don't really intersect.

I mean, maybe once in a couple years you'd run into some weird problem that requires deep knowledge to solve, but "severely limits" might be a bit of an overstatement. (And might be some form of unwarranted gatekeeping IMHO.)

Everyone has limits/gaps in their knowledge, while C and pointers are part of the standard curriculum for CS degrees, not everyone has to be such cookie cutter devs (as long as they do their job and their employers are happy)

Re: The case for language agnostic hiring

#83

Post by cik »

We've descended into this clickbait driven world of absolutes, when the reality are shades of grey.

Language agnostic folks are great (awesome) for being able to contribute in multiple places. There's a cost to pay, but one that's well worth it IMHO, in many cases. To be honest, this is my preference, as someone who hires a lot of these folks. It also changes the approach to team building - for the better, in my opinion.

But there are also many cases where this doesn't work. Not infrequently, you're looking for someone who has in depth experience in X domain, or Y ecosystem. This too has its place - and is driven by real business need.

But I won't pretend that someone with zero experience doing natural language development (yup, still a thing) can be effective. Some back end people will never grok front-end, and vice versa.

So, hiring is grey - intentionally, because it's situational.

Re: The case for language agnostic hiring

#84

Post by techsin101 »

i would disagree, if someone is highly specialized in a language X then they are going to be very resistant to learning something new. And if they have to then it'd be a slow process. They would have to learn: language, frameworks, build tools, code base, industry concepts. Compare this to someone who is already familiar with tech stack: they would be only learning code base and industry concepts.

Re: The case for language agnostic hiring

#85

Post by rluhar »

schroeding wrote: post #8

Elixir, Haskell et al. require concepts that are not required at all in e.g. Java. The functional programming module at my university had the highest failure rate after the math and statistics classes. Even something like C can require new concepts. I was a tutor for a university C programming course and students that had no problems with Java struggled hard with direct memory manipulation, pointer arithmetic etc., b…

I think a key skill to evaluate is the "learning how to learn". Can a developer pick up a new language and are they flexible enough to get their head around a different concept. I agree that we need to support learning - knowledge can be acquired, but the willingness to go outside your comfort zone is something that is a bit more innate.

Re: The case for language agnostic hiring

#86

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th »

imgabe wrote: post #21
schroeding wrote: post #8

Elixir, Haskell et al. require concepts that are not required at all in e.g. Java. The functional programming module at my university had the highest failure rate after the math and statistics classes. Even something like C can require new concepts. I was a tutor for a university C programming course and students that had no problems with Java struggled hard with direct memory manipulation, pointer arithmetic etc., b…

A working dev should be well beyond the understanding of a third-year CS student. This is not "advanced" from the perspective of someone in practice, it is the requirement to get in to the practice. (I know people get programming jobs without CS degrees, but if you can do that, you can teach yourself how pointers work)

I'd go one further.

If you struggle with pointers and direct memory manipulation in C, you didn't understand Java nearly as well as you thought you did.

There's a distinction between reference and pointer in C++, but in Java they're basically the same thing with roughly the same semantics, up to and including the ability to be null.

Re: The case for language agnostic hiring

#87

Post by modriano »

wiseowise wrote: post #54
_tardigrade wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have CS degree but I do have 7 years commercial experience with Python/Django Rest Framework and I have no idea how pointers work.

That’s not something to be proud of.

No post body was provided.

Re: The case for language agnostic hiring

#88

Post by tester756 »

nonasktell wrote: post #46
tester756 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you only know java are you even a real (professional) dev? lol, if I were java dev I'd be pissed off. honestly this unsound argument that dev which knows more languages is better just because of that needs to die. Concepts are above languages You don't have to know languages in order to be familiar with the concepts. Additionally certain languages do not offer real value to the other For example I've been writing…

"You don't have to know languages in order to be familiar with the concepts." If you only ever coded in a language that doesn't even offer you the ability to tinker with some concepts, you can't be familiar with those. Reading one article about it without ever touching code, is not being familiar with a programming concept. I'm not saying you should know 10 languages, but if you want to be anything more than a fronte…

>If you only ever coded in a language that doesn't even offer you the ability to tinker with some concepts, you can't be familiar with those. Reading one article about it without ever touching code, is not being familiar with a programming concept.

I disagree, you're familiar by definition.

You're just not experienced and may be not aware of pros and cons unless the article/book/w.e showed them.

Whether experience is important is up to the thing you're talking about.

For example: stealing Result from other language to replace exceptions in your language doesn't require you to use Result impl. in other lang.

Re: The case for language agnostic hiring

#89

Post by nilsbunger »

cik wrote: post #83

We've descended into this clickbait driven world of absolutes, when the reality are shades of grey. Language agnostic folks are great (awesome) for being able to contribute in multiple places. There's a cost to pay, but one that's well worth it IMHO, in many cases. To be honest, this is my preference, as someone who hires a lot of these folks. It also changes the approach to team building - for the better, in my opin…

The article’s argument is to be language-agnostic, not domain-agnostic.

For example, for a Django web app, would you hire someone who

* doesn’t know python but has done full stack web development in another framework (eg rails, express, .NET, etc)

Or

* knows python really well but has never built a web app

I’d rather hire the web developer in that case. A new language isn’t too hard to pick up compared to learning all about how web apps are constructed.

In your example, NLP is a domain, like web programming. Domain expertise takes much longer to develop than picking up another language in the same domain.

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