Re: not enough real programmers? (was Re: Byte Magazine: 18 Vintage

[gleason@mwk.com (Lee K. Gleason)]

In article <jeff-0808991123420001@192.168.0.2>, jeff@port-charles.com (Jeff Jungblut) writes:
> In article <xlxyafmif0u.fsf@gold.cis.ohio-state.edu>, Matt Curtin
> <cmcurtin@interhack.net> wrote:
> 
>> >>>>> On Sat, 07 Aug 1999 12:27:42 GMT, prs@gol.com (Peter Stephenson) said:
>> 
>> Peter> It can be difficult recruiting good programmers, though.  I
>> Peter> mean, how the hell do you find out whether they can code in an
>> Peter> interview?
>> 
>> Good question.
>> 
>> A few (obvious?) candidates:
>>  o Ask for their environment customization files (.emacs, .kshrc,
>>    .profile, .login, etc.)
> 
> That's not really going to tell you if the person is a good programmer. 
> It's just going to separate the geek programmers, who are into tweaking
> their computing environment, from other programmers who don't bother
> tweaking.  I once worked with a programmer in a Windows environment who
> was brilliant in Smalltalk but was completely clueless when she needed to
> add a path to her AUTOEXEC.BAT file.  You needn't be a platform expert to
> be a competent programmer.
> 

  In my work, I have to travel to lots of different machines...early on
I figured out that it would be easier to just learn to live in an
un-customized environment, rather than have to remember two different
ways to do things (my local customized environment, and the "raw" environment
I would constantly have to deal with)...so this test would eliminate me...

Lee K. Gleason N5ZMR
Control-G Consultants
gleason@insync.net