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

[Geoffrey Teale]

On 11/02/2008, Richie Jarvis <richie at helkit.com> wrote:
>
> My recruitment is more tending towards Field Engineers, who require a
> very broad background in multiple techs.  Same rules apply though - I
> did like Geoffrey's list - its very good (apart from the specific
> references to things some folks might not have heard of...  WTF is
> Scheme - /me googles....)



Well again - it's not the specifics but the depth of understanding and the
ability to communicate that I look for.  I think there is an element of
tailoring these requirements to the job in hand.   If I were hiring people
to write mundane in-house database applications my expectations would
differ.  Incidentally, for the roles I recruit for,  I would be a little
worried if someone had not even heard of Scheme - though that would never be
a deciding factor in it's self.   I will admit Scheme is not widely used in
businesses, but it is one of the primary languages in a whole domain of
programming and the primary language used in some of the primary texts on
computer science over the last 30 years.

I don't expect everyone to have in depth to not be aware of it or any other
language in particular (I really don't care if you have 5 years experience
in Smalltalk or Eiffel), but not being aware of what these languages are and
broadly where they fit into the scheme of things (no pun intended) suggests
that the person in question has not looked at the wider topic of programming
- i.e. they have not looked beyond the day-to-day requirements of their
job.   Given that the question is "How to tell if someone is a really good
programmer?", I think this level of interest is vital.   I have met plenty
of proficient programmer who work 9-5 and don't program outside work, or
only learn new skills when they think they need to in order to find another
job (or stay employed) - but I have never met a really good or great
programmer who lived like that.

Also worth saying people who claim to know about something, but then come
out wih inaccurate statement cribbed from popular opinion don't do well in
my books either.

Incidentally, for those who are in the dark: Scheme is on of the two main,
stadardised dialects of Lisp, the other being Common Lisp.  Unlike Common
Lisp, Scheme's standard is very much alive and in development.   The latest
standard R6RS (the Revised, Revised, Revised, Revised, Revised, Revised
Report of the algorithmic language Scheme) was only ratified in August
2007.   Whilst Common Lisp is a huge standard with a massive library of
commands, Scheme takes the approach that small is beautiful and (as a
standard) has probably faired better because of it..

Here a tiny intro from  MSDN magazine:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/10/EndBracket/default.aspx

Peter Norvig, director of research at Google has some stuff about Scheme,
Lisp (more generally), Python and Java:

http://norvig.com/

The canonical book on computer science using Scheme is freely available
here:

http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html


.. any questions I'm happy to help :-)

-- 
Geoff Teale
<tealeg at member.fsf.org>
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