From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2005-03-12T03:23:01+09:00
Subject: Re: [JOB] Possible ruby job in SF Bay Area

David Heinemeier Hansson wrote:
>> Ruby: 2 years, responsible for at least one project of >10K
>>       lines. (Strong Lisp/SmallTalk background may be an
>>       acceptable substitute.)
> 
> 
> While I think its great to see the job market get into drive, it would 
> also be nice if we could avoid being as narrowly defined as the drone 
> lines.

You're right. I always hated reading any job posting that was just a 
hash of <acronym> => <years>.

> I, for one, wouldn't fit the description above. Number of years is a 
> utter lackluster  indicator for job performance. Rewarding the use of 
> 10K lines in Ruby is also fairly questionable.

Regarding years: note that the announcement mentioned the equivalence of 
Lisp/SmallTalk. I had hoped that the implication was for the applicant 
to be comfortable with closures, recursion, metaprogramming, 
concurrency, etc.: in short, a basic understanding of most of SICP 
(oops, another acronym). I should have said that to begin with...

Regarding program size: I disagree. Our application is large because our 
subject matter is large in an irreducible way. The app needs to interact 
with 3rd party software that has its own highly complex (and often 
poorly designed) input/output system. It needs to do a large variety of 
geometrical calculations (not difficult ones). The programmer for this 
job needs to be comfortable with managing a large number of ugly 
details. That skill is distinct (though of course not exclusive) from 
writing a lovely little ruby library.

Thank you, David, for making me be more explicit.