<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 08/02/2008, <b class="gmail_sendername">Andrew Guard</b> <<a href="mailto:andrew08@andrewguard.com">andrew08@andrewguard.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
So is really possible to tell who is a really good programmer. If so<br>what is the tell, tell sings to look for?</blockquote><div><br><br>Well, that depends a lot on th situation you're assessing them under.
Interview conditions are stressful and therefore a persons shyness can
skew the results, however I'd say broadly it;s very much something that
can be assessed. What;s much harder is to say "will this person work
hard and will they fit into the team".<br>
<br>
Generally the golden rules for me are:<br>
<br>
- They program outside of work and have been doing so since before
they went to Uni (or perhaps they didn't even go to University)<br>
- They have a non-trivial understanding of computer science (that is
they could discuss implementations of say hash tables, B-trees, and
Tries without straining too much).<br>
- They are aware of new developments and play with new technology as a rule<br>
- They may not have commercial experience in more than one language,
but they will have programmed in 7 or 8 languages at least during their
life.<br>
- If they think Scheme rocks and they can explain to you succinctly
why hygenic macros make it the best language in existance then you're
probably onto a winner :-)<br>
- If they don't think they're leat just because they use vi (we have
already established that wannabe's use vi and real programmers use
emacs :-))<br>
<br>
.. the last ones a joke, BTW, but the wannabe point is based on some experience of reality.<br>
<br></div></div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Geoff Teale<br><<a href="mailto:tealeg@member.fsf.org">tealeg@member.fsf.org</a>>