[Sussex] How to tell if someone a really good programmer?

[Andy Smith]

Hi Andrew,

On Fri, Feb 08, 2008 at 04:45:13PM +0000, Andrew Guard wrote:
> So is really possible to tell who is a really good programmer. If so
> what is the tell, tell sings to look for?

If this is for a job interview, consider setting some small programming
challenges.  Take elements of the existing codebase and find
self-contained parts, then ask the candidate to implement that.  The
way they choose to do it is often as interesting as whether their
solution actually works.

This doesn't have to be high tech; it can be done with pencil and
paper.

I decided I was better as a sysadmin some 8 or 9 years ago, but when I
was applying for C programming jobs I was asked to write code to
reverse a linked list, sort an array, hash some values, etc etc.

Cheers,
Andy

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