How to recognise a good programmer (2007)

Okay, let me now be completely clear on how I interpreted your original statement:

Let "an institution" be "a place where one may work on projects safe in the knowledge that one's base needs for food and shelter will be met."

    I(x) := x is an institution

    S(x) := x seeks to join an institution

    A(x,y) := x will accept y

    P(x) := x has completed a project

    1. ∀xy( (S(x) ∧ I(y) ∧ A(y,x)) → P(x) )

    2. ∀xy∃z( (S(x) ∧ I(y) ∧ P(x)) → (I(z) ∧ y≠z ∧ A(z,x))) )

    ∴ ∀xy∃z( (S(x) ∧ I(y) ∧ A(y,x)) → (I(z) ∧ y≠z ∧ A(z,x))) )

Or more prosaically, "every institution that will accept a person (and thereby let them create a project) requires that there exists a project they have already completed (and thereby another institution willing to accept that person.)" Obviously there's a problem with that statement :)

That being said, I agree completely with your first paragraph. I was being half-satirical—not intending to find a flaw in your argument, so much as desiring to provoke you into strengthening your point by clarifying it (and trying to go one step beyond the common-sense assumption of "our current society" to see where this philosophy would take you.)

Do you think the world would be better if programmers could not transition into the workforce until they had created something that no one had asked them to create? The idea behind a company hiring you is that they need what you have, and so they pay you for it. If you're creating something and no one's paying you for it, then, presumably, either you aren't marketing it well enough, or it's something nobody needs (or you've made it as an act of goodwill, but the likelihood of Joe the Programmer writing FOSS as anything other than a prerequisite to a job—which, therefore, means that he really would rather have been paid, but just couldn't find a taker, again implying that he was underemployed—is slim to nil.)

I know a lot of good programmers who started in university. Not everyone discovers their passion when they're young, or has the opportunity to pursue that passion (in the third world, starting young may mean starting in university). Some of the skills that help you "code smarter" are not necessarily learned in front of a keyboard (math, English, etc.).

Honestly, it would serve more to guide my questions than it would to just flat dismiss someone as untalented or apathetic.

Curiosity and genuine interest develop at different times for different people depending on the circumstances of their life. They might have not discovered programming until later in their life, or they may have been soured by an bad experience early on and only came back later on.

For some people, they don't discover programming until university, but then find the absolutely love it and quickly develop a considerable talent. For these people, who do exist, the pre-university test is a false negative.

A lot of these tests people come up with are based on the concept that past performance indicates future potential. The thing about these tests is that they suck really bad, except that for certain things there are no other tests.

A meteorologist I once heard talking about weather phenomena in Alaska joked in his talk about how there are two possibilites for available weather data there: data sparse, or data void. It is much the same in finding good programmers. There are a lot of important considerations, and getting a feel on each depends on sparse data at best. The best advice I can offer is don't take things like this too personally. Following advice from pg almost certainly applies to applying and interviewing for jobs as well.

Don't be put off if they say no. Rejection is almost always less personal than the rejectee imagines. Just move on to the next. (This applies to dating too.) - Paul Graham, Undergraduation.

Just take it as a sign that they probably would be judging you even after you are hired in ways that you might find unreasonable. Not every hacker is meant for every programming job.

I think there's a good point in your comment but I think you have buried it in unnecessary insults and mischaracterizations of the article.

For all of the great devs I know and have known programming is very much a passion for them, and they will engage that passion outside of work. But this doesn't mean their job is their life or that they don't maintain a healthy work/life balance. Indeed, working on projects they're passionate about outside of work can often provide a release from toiling with a brain-dead code base at work.

Also, the vast majority of software development may not be hard, but perhaps that's because the vast majority of developers aren't that good. The work being done by the best devs is orders of magnitude better (and more challenging) than the work being done by the daily-wtf generating paycheck programmers in the enterprise trenches.

This is where the author's string of side projects comes in to play. I mean face it, it's kind of difficult to make something really cool in your spare time without getting paid to do so.