10 traits to look for when you’re hiring a programmer: But when the boss says, “I know from the technical perspective this is a bad idea, but this is how we need to do it,” it’s final. All too often, certain “rogue coders” will ignore their marching orders and go do their own thing. — OMG, “rogue coders”?!? Although most of the points are valid (and well-known) things to look for in a programmer, the “pushback” is actually a positive quality. If you hire a top programmer, you have to trust him to do the right thing and at the very least discuss the reasons for technical compromises with him. On the other hand, if you hire a programmer because he knows shirt designers you really would prefer him to sit tight and be quiet :)
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5
Mar 08
Evolution v/s revolution
Evolution v/s revolution: “The fact that languages will improve over time, as software libraries already do, is exciting. It’s less scary than learning a whole new language.” — sorry, Nathan, but it’s not like that. Language is in a way a paradigm that a programmer accepts to build his software on. And paradigm shift is never evolutionary, so unless the changes to the language are small and backwards-compatible they can discourage innovation as software skills and libraries quickly become obsolete (try compiling a library from before 2000 on the latest GHC). Change and learning are necessary, but a stable foundation is also important.