From: Sean O'Dell <sean@...>
Date: 2004-06-09T04:34:34+09:00
Subject: Re: Unit tests ... not just for the young

On Tuesday 08 June 2004 12:26, Gennady wrote:
> Sean O'Dell wrote:
> > On Tuesday 08 June 2004 12:12, Michael Campbell wrote:
> >>>Maybe it depends on what your are doing, but I'm afraid for some
> >>>things it hasn't changed much. My belief (don't flame me) is that
> >>>those with inexperience do OK when they are working on things that
> >>>give visible feedback, like GUI's and such, but take number
> >>>crunching or data processing where errors don't readily
> >>>reveal themselves (unless you code defensively), then they tend to make
> >>>a lot of mistakes and/or leave behind a bunch of land mines.
> >>
> >>I wouldn't necessarily disagree, but the absence or presence of a CS
> >>(et. al.) doesn't necessarily skew that heavily in one way.  I've been
> >>in this industry a long time too, and I've seen this assertion made a
> >>lot of times, almost exclusively by people w/o the degree they're
> >>blaming poor workmanship on.
> >
> > There's truth behind the assertion.
> >
> > Degrees look GREAT in interviews.  Given a young, sharply-dressed person
> > with a degree, compared with a middle-aged programmer with loads of
> > experience but no degree, people just get gooey about youth and pedigree.
> >  It's human nature.
>
> How about a middle-aged programmer with loads of experience AND a
> degree? ;-)

Good to go!  My experiences haven't been bad with experienced programmers, 
just the ones toting nothing more than a degree.

	Sean O'Dell