From: Todd Benson <caduceass@...>
Date: 2008-05-21T00:33:45+09:00
Subject: Re: Is Necessary for all rails employee know computer knowledge?

On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 10:05 AM, Eleanor McHugh
<eleanor@games-with-brains.com> wrote:
http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fsteve.yegge.googlepages.com%2Fage-racecar-driver&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=UAjfJNzLRMc
>
> It's a fascinating article, not least because I can see where both the
> author and the interviewee are coming from. Once you know a decent amount of
> computer science it's often difficult to take developers seriously who lack
> that background, but by doing so we miss the benefits that knowledge from
> other disciplines can offer in solving complex problems.
>
> I started out in physics and I've spent a fair amount of my professional
> career arguing with very capable CS experts over all kinds of problems which
> are elementary with my background but have them scuttling back to graph
> theory, and conversely I meet a lot of web developers who've come from a
> non-academic and despite being very good at their specialism have a complete
> lack of confidence about their abilities. So no, in my opinion a rails
> programmer doesn't have to be a whizz at computer science or even
> necessarily with computers - although what kind of masochist works all day
> with tools that they neither like or understand?
>
> On the other hand there are certain key abilities that any developer does
> need, and which I've found surprisingly lacking in many that I've worked
> with: a grasp of basic logic; ability to sequence and classify; a cool head
> when things aren't going well; intense curiosity. Unfortunately all of these
> are as likely to get you into trouble as they are to get your projects out
> the door...
>
> I must admit though that if I was dealing with a Rails team I would expect
> anyone who was a developer to know how to run up the application at least
> locally as that's a five minute google and falls under the 'intense
> curiosity' category ;)
>
>
> Ellie

You left out philosophical differences, which is where the rubber
meets the road at times.  Everything you said makes sense, though.
I've been waiting to do a monologue about that, but realized that I'm
not eloquent enough, and also chickened out a bit :)

Here's hiring criteria for me:

I throw a framework (or, language) at the person, let them play, and
let them show me something in a day or two (length of time depends on
frame/lang); bonus points for seeing something that I haven't.

Credentials mean almost nothing to me.  If you can write a book,
great, but don't try to tell me at the same time you know how to solve
problems.  The two things are "almost" orthogonal.

Todd