Re: not enough real programmers?

["Ruff Records" <ruffrecords@geocities.com>]

Luc Van der Veken wrote in message
>But with the exception of maybe one question (the C++ one), the
>answers you'll get won't give an indication of whether the people
>you're interviewing are [technically] competent for doing the
>job.
>
This is definitely not true.  It is an excellent technique that I have used
to recruit many very technically competent people.

>What you will get is a collection of the best salespeople (those
>who are best in verbal expression an
d presentation), instead of
>the best programmers.
>
>As replies to your first two questions you'll probably get a
>description (told in the first person) of the important decisions
>the project leader made, and how the *team* the applicant was in
>attacked the project.
>

But that is just when a good interviewer knows to probe the candidate for
THEIR contribution.

>As for the last question, an example: there's a huge difference
>between saying "[among other things] a good programmer writes
>code that's maintainable", and actually writing maintainable
>code.
>

Of course there's a difference, but the question is just trying to establish
if the candidate knows this and also to elicit factors born of his/her
personal experience.


>IMO, a good way to evaluate an applicant is making him write a
>simple project (or even just an algoritm), and then evaluate the
>STYLE of his code (not the actual code itself).


This is equally valid IMO but not sufficient on its own.

IAn