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How to Recognize a Good Programmer
KDan writes to share an article he has written about what some of the key factors in recognizing a good programmer. "It's not as easy as it sounds. CV experience is only of limited use here, because great programmers don't always have the 'official' experience to demonstrate that they're great. In fact, a lot of that CV experience can be misleading. Yet there are a number of subtle cues that you can get, even from the CV, to figure out whether someone's a great programmer."
Now I know exactly how to manipulate my resume to look like a good programmer.
It's easier than you think:
After sufficient interactions like these with a good programmer you really should be able to recognize him (or her).
(Appropriate apologies to Steve Martin for shameless borrowing of his "How to get a million dollars, and not pay taxes" routine.
How to recognize someone who would give good advice about how to recognize a good programmer ? I think the C.V. can be misleading : the " official " experience at hiring programmers does not necessarily mean the the person would be apt at giving good advice about hiring programmers.
I would be much more interested in an article that tells programmers how to recognize good business people. I don't want to waste five years of my life implementing some POS idea by Joe Random MBA that is never going to make a dime. I am extremely hesitant to go work for any startup unless I personally know the people starting it and know that they have a track record of making good business decisions. From my experience, many business people feel the same way about technical people.
And what is this about startups failing because the business people hire crappy programmers. Has anyone considered that maybe selling pet food over the internet is simply less efficient that the distribution system build by companies like Wal-Mart?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Cache: http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:-PJEtsLZfV8J:www.inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to-recognise-a-good-programmer/+hire+good+progammer+site:inter-sections.net&hl=en&lr=lang_en&client=firefox-a&gl=uk&strip=1
bang goes my karma... again...
I believe CV (Curriculum Vitae) is generally referred to as a résumé in the US. CV is a more British term.
They obviously can't find a good sysadmin that can project future load on their servers and scale accordingly ;)
Or maybe they can, and the sysadmin can just blame the evil bean counters.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
I'm not sure I trust real world C++ news coming from Bjarne Stroustrup (sorry I mangled his name), I mean that's the guy who still thinks the C++ Template syntax is beautiful. Plus, it's entirely possible his perception is skewed a bit with regards to his own baby.
I read the internet for the articles.
After 15 years in IT, I've noticed that programmers as a lot typically cannot spell even the most basic 3-syllable words, so when you find a coder who actually spells properly get out your checkbook. Like it or not, being able to spell is a significant indication of character, especially the propensity for paying attention to detail (a trait you certainly want in a professional coder).
"To err is human, to mod Funny divine."
I think the author of this article is way off the mark. The title should have been "How to recognize a programmer who's likely to work 18 hours for very little pay." Almost all of his points boil down to the fact that he thinks all good programmers are the ones that can pad out their resume with 900 technologies and eat, sleep, and breathe programming. I can't even begin to tell you how many absolutely amazing C++/Java/Python programmers I've met who I can almost guarantee have never even touched Ruby before. Just because a programmer doesn't go out of their way to try out every single new technology that hits the market doesn't diminish their abilities at those they do use. The author of this article is clearly looking for a programming work horse that he can throw unreasonable expectations on and toss new technology buzz words at until their head explodes. Guess that's probably what you need when you plan a startup and only want to hire one guy to do the work of 10...
CV is commonly used in the academic world in the US. Resume would be more common pretty much anywhere else in the US.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
How can I find programmers who don't squander their days reading Slashdot.
Jeez! Don't they teach you kids Latin anymore?
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
The best I've met have degrees in English, Physics, Engineering, or Math. They then focused on the programming aspect as needed to create tools that helped them and their peers to streamline their work. As that focus became more of a primary job function, they honed their skills and methodology around maintainable code, version control, security, documentation, reusable modules, etc.
I'm guilty of being one of these types myself, but have since moved up to project management around security type stuff after having taught those who replaced me the things that I learned through experience.
Ask him if he's a good programmer in klingon
... I am brushing my teeth in the morning in the mirror, grinning back at me, saying what a great programmer I am. :-)
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
That list is very, VERY good in my opinion, if obvious (but not so obvious to HR people).
.NET, and even if you worked with them constantly for the next 10 years, learning something new every day, you'd still have more to find (and by more, I mean significant things). Thats why once, in .NET, I coded some tool, it took let say 50000 lines of code, then learned about some obscure feature that could have reduced it to 500. Yes, 500.
However, two things came to mind. The variety part. Yes, its good. I personally am fluent in just about all programming environments known to man, more data storage techs than I can count, too many business types, and things vastly different, like business intelligence and biology (I started as a programmer for R&D biotech softwares).
The catch is, that tends to show that you're too much everywhere. You can take one "enterprise" stack, let say J2EE or
Those are things that makes the difference between a project taking a year, and one taking a month. Once I realised that (and people hiring know this just too well), I specialised in a 2-3 technologies (specialising in just one isn't enough to keep track of the evolution of the field), and I've been a much better developer since then.
You need to have a broad VIEW of the field, but still be specialised, to be efficient at what you do. Knowing 10 technologies equaly well means that you don't know either of them at their peek.
Secondly, the certification thing. We all know certification means crap, I agree, but like the article does state, it helps hiring people to spend less time interviewing you about the obvious. If you say you're Java certified, they can only ask 2-3 questions to make sure you truly are, and forget about testing you on a Java hello world. That way, they can spend more time testing you on the important stuff, like actual development expertise, as opposed to syntax knowledge. Also, having a lot of certifications, if you can prove you didn't brain dump them, can go in the "broad knowledge" and "passionate" part. If you have 12 certifications with 12 technologies, well, it shows you like knowing your stuff (those tests can sometime ask for pretty pointy things...)
CV is latin for Curriculae Vitae which as someone else noted means "course of life" and it is a bit of a misnomer to use "CV" as a resume as traditionally a CV actually includes everything related to your "life" - thus "course of life" - a true CV would be more a of a large binder with many many pages - a portfolio if you will - of anything and everything you have accomplished and achieved in your life whereas a resume is usually just a one page condensed version of anything relevant to the job you are trying to acquire.
I actually have something that is closer to a true CV - a portfolio that is about 25 pages of material of all my IT experience, education, major projects, contacts, letters of recommendation, etc. When I apply for a job I send them my resume but if I get called for an interview I bring in my portfolio and use it during the interview - it often has a very large positive impact.
First, there is razor sharp intellect and subtle, erudite wit. There's the way he has of getting right to the heart of matters, his effortlessly quick and authoritative opinions on an astonishing array of subjects. Of course it is conceivable that some might miss his unconventional but undeniable good looks, although that might stretch the bounds of credibility.
But in a pinch you can go with the way that he often goes about wearing your pants or the fact that he stares back at you from the mirror every morning. That's a dead giveaway.
Of course if that fellow's unavailable, most people end up settling for somebody who, while utterly lacking his extraordinary qualities, nonetheless agree with as many of his opinions has he has cared to express.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The first category is crap; "passion" is often mis-identified (as in the case of the article) and linked to what people do in their spare time.
The idea that not programming in your spare time makes you a poor programmer is abjectly false and amazingly stupid considering the amount of complaints within the industry about working hours, laundry-list job listings, industry only for the young and unmarried, etc.
I've known too many counter examples to debunk this; people who would talk on end on how "great" and wonderful a technology was only to mis-use it to the detriment of the business and the customer. People who had no lives; bragging about what they did at home, what OSS projects they were working on only to get fired for not being able to understand or structure requirements, not having enough domain knowledge of the industry they were working in, or not being able to meet the customer's needs.
Frankly, I work 50+ hours a week and the last thing I want or feel a need to do is look at a f*cking computer when I go home. And this comes from someone who got a Master's in CS while working full time; led implementation of new technologies and languages within the group.
It sure as _hell_ doesn't mean I don't have passion for what I do.
How can I find programmers who don't squander their days reading Slashdot.
Easy...If they can finish any of these.. don't hire them...
a) I for one welcome our new programming _________
b) In Soviet Russia the programmers ____ ___
c)
1. Hire programmer
2. ?????
3. ______
or make a comment about Macs/PS3/Windows and if you get modded/spelling or grammar corrected.. the same applies.
I was going to read the article but I didn't because I'm too afraid that there's going to be pictures of what good programmers look like. Let's face it, we're not the chic-est demographic on the planet.
This is a serious question. I totally agree on every point except that a "great programmer is uncomfortable using a technology he doesn't feel is right". Two developers can be great but be completely at odds. Wouldn't the 'better' programmer say, "Perhaps I don't feel right because I don't know enough about it?" Strong opinions about certain technologies, in my experience, signifies a degree of ignorance and imbalance; and they didn't learn it correctly, extensively, or in the right context. In my opinion, a great programmer is more open-minded, allowing a non-biased filter to consider technologies he doesn't "feel is right." Am I right?
The list seems to be lacking one of the more important ways of identifying a good programmer -- the uncanny ability to quote from the entire works of Monty Python.
I wouldn't trust Bjarne on whatever he says about C++ - he's the creator, and he doesn't have an objective POV. Note that it doesn't matter if he's rather skeptic or enthusiastic about anything C++...
.NET is going up like a rocket in the Windows world, and companies seem to often be more concerned with their web appearance than with the quality of the programs they write - and thus use Java or .NET, because it's faster to deploy. The FOSS world is making a big fuss about C - and coding GUIs in C (like GTK) has to be the worst idea I've ever seen, by the way (Oh, I'll get modded down for that...). While new and powerful languages like Haskell seem to get a lot of attention.
That said, I don't really know if he's right anyways. Everything
C++'s main advantage is the same as Microsoft's: it's everywhere, there are just so many libs out there and there exist language bindings for just about everything. We don't really know anything about the lifespan of computer languages yet. Just when I thought it's finally dead for good, I heard about a release of a new version of a FOSS Pascal compiler.
And we're waaaay offtopic here...
I'm an infovore...
from the article, what's the #1 'negative'?
Negative indicators:
* Programming is a day job
excuse me, I am a really good programmer, did the whole 9 yards growing up as a stereotypical geek (not into sports, into programming way before it was fashionable to do so, from basic, to turbo pascal, to z80 assembly etc.), I lived and breathed programming and computers for many years of my life, however now I am in my late 30s and I try to have a much healthier work-life balance, I don't see why this should be a negative at all.
If I wasn't working at a computer dev job I would probably be coding a bit for fun, but there is no way that nowadays you could get me to talk shop for hours just for the fun of it.
Also
In fact, the great programmer will be the one talking your ear off about a new technology that you haven't even heard of, explaining to you why you must use it in your business, even if none of your staff knows how to use it. Even if it's a technology he doesn't know how to use yet.
gimme a break, for me this would be a huge no-no, it would be the hallmark of somebody going after every possible latest fad, instead of focusing on proven tools for the job. Yes, there ARE cases where the bleeding edge is needed, but they are the exception rather than the rule: if I have a business I want code that is mantainable, and that, if the 'wiz developer' gets hit by a bus, is understandable by others (read, it's not such a niche skill that if I lose that person my business will fold because it's impossible to find a replacement).
Good programmers will have a tendency to talk your ear off about some technical detail of what they're working on (but while clearly believing, sincerely, that what they're talking about is really worth talking about). Some people might see that as maladapted social skills (which it is), but if you want to recognise a good developer, this passion for what they're doing at the expense of social smoothness is a very strong indicator.
this is another totally bogus criteria: in nowaday's workplace soft skills (being able to work as a team expecially) are just as important; gone are the days of the single programmer in his ivory tower producing code that only himself can understand. You need to have a team, and if I have to choose between person A who is, say, a programmer worth 100/100 but has 0 social skills, and person B who is, say, worth 80/100 but gets along with everybody, I will choose person B every time. A gelled team is greater than the sum of its parts, but you can't gel a team full of primadonnas and socially maladapted people.
If you are such a 'smart' programmer you will realize that 'programming' social interactions is as important as programming computers, and you will apply your skills to that as well, making your workplace a lot better and likely improving drastically your career prospects.
If you're hiring for a small business, or you need really smart developers for a crack team that will implement agile development in your enterprise, you should disregard most formal qualifications as noise.
give me a break, being smart and having no formal qualifications is a lot worse than being smart AND having formal qualifications. I have a M.Sc. in Electronic Engineering: have I used anything I learned in university in my career? Not at all. Have those years broadened my horizons, introduced me to a lot of different concepts and methodologies that made me a much, much, much better programmer than I was before? You bet. Your 'crack team in agile programming' will likely end up implementing something O(n^3) (because they have no clue about computational complexity) while your university educated buzzword-averse reliable programmer will give you O(n^2) or even O(n log n) because they've been there and done that many times before in a lot of different other contexts.
THESE to me are the signs of a great programmer, experience, good grasp of architectural con
-- the cake is a lie
He can re-program a Tram system with a remote control.
How else do you get the interview in the first place?
-mkb
Some of the points made in this article are good, but a couple are way off the mark.
He lists as a negative indicator *anyone* who considers programming as a "day job." I know quite a few programmers who consider programming a day job. They come into work at 9, they work for 8 hours, they go home at 5, and then they do something entirely different. But the code that they produce while at work is brilliant. They are extremely bright people who enjoy programming, but don't live and breath it. They would rather do something else while not at work.
He lists as a positive indicator *anyone* who is passionate about technology. Sorry, but I've met a lot of people who are bubbling over with enthusiasm about programming, but can't code worth shit. These are the people dive headfirst into a programming job without any thought of design or architecture, and you end up with an application that uses half a dozen bleeding edge technologies, all bundled together with virtual duct tape, that disintegrates at the first input exception.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
I started reading the article but when I got to this bit I realized they had nothing useful to say:
what killed most of the startups in the e-commerce business back in the 90s, it was bad programmers. A lot of those companies were started by business guys who thought the way startups worked was that you had some clever idea and then hired programmers to implement it.
Ummm, if you start a business thinking that simply hiring programmers to implement your clever idea would make a successful business, you've already failed. If you want to start a successful business, the first thing you have to do is actually know how to run a business. Having a clever ideas makes you clever, maybe, but it doesn't mean you know jack about managing a business. Hiring bad programmers is simply the natural conclusion of somebody that didn't know what they were doing in the first place.
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I disagree with a lot of these points.
Reasonably good indicators
Ability to yammer on about a subject one's audience does not care about is a weak indicator of programming ability and a strong indicator of poor communication skills
OK
NO, NO, NO!
A good programmer has an open mind and makes decisions after thought, study, and understanding the users' needs; not based on some knee-jerk personal prejudice.
There is nothing wrong with taking advantage of company-sponsored courses. Taking advantage of classroom opportunities is just good time management (it can be easier to learn more, faster, in a well-taught course than in self-study).
So what you're looking for is a prima donna who will refuse to work in the environment you ask him to, and is insubordinate out of the gate? No. A good programmer will find the strengths of the technology you've picked and design a strategy that plays to those, rather than just telling you you've made a stupid choice and should have used his pet technology instead.
I don't know if it's ever a good idea to hire someone who "doesn't seem too smart."
That's a stupid criterion. Why someone starting programming is a lot more important than when
Inability to write a complete CV is hardly an indicator of competence. The author is biased in favor of people who started programming at the age of 9, as he did.
Nonsense; depth of knowledge is as important as breadth of knowledge. Ability to justify 50 different buzzwords on one's resume doesn't make someone a good programmer. It is a lot better to talk about the problems the candidate has solved, than the technology used to solve them.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Sorry, but I was not impressed with this article. First off, it was not bad programming that killed off late '90s ecommerce startups. It was flawed business models. In fact, I would say that unless you're selling software or some kind of technology service, it is highly unlikely that even a crap programming team will derail your firm if you have a fundamentally solid business model. So the backdrop for this article is flawed because it assumes that programming talent defines business success. Secondly, this article does not (as the title suggests) tell you HOW to recognize a good programmer. It attempts to define WHAT a good programmer possesses. There's a big difference between WHAT and HOW. If you want to know HOW to spot if someone is intelligent can be significantly more challenging than simply saying "I want someone smart". Furthermore, it misses one of the biggest points for a successful programmer - namely, Communication Skills! If a programmer can not articulate their understanding of the requirements and communicate back issues, concerns, and ideas, then you are taking a major risk. It doesn't matter that they COULD HAVE programmed the next BIG THING.... if they didn't understand the requirements, they will have wasted their time (and someone's money). And what about being able to work with the business and communicate ideas? How about time management and multitasking skills? I would hire a mediocre developer with solid communication skills and a willingness to learn over someone with top 1% programming talent who can't communicate a sentence properly. Ok, I'm done ranting.
"A; B; while(F) { C; D; A; B;} C; D;" from "while (F) {A; B; C; D; }" works only if the loop always iterates 2 or more times. If F is not true or F is true for 1 iteration, the proposed substitution is incorrect.
Every time you have an interview, it should be their interview as much as yours. That's the point of an interview, to see if you fit together, not just to see if they think you fit them, but to see if you think they fit you too.
Every interview I've ever had, I interviewed my interviewer as much as they interviewed me. Maybe I'm strange, but it's worked so far.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
The Python Paradox
Paul Graham
http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html
August 2004
In a recent talk I said something that upset a lot of people: that you could get smarter programmers to work on a Python project than you could to work on a Java project.
I didn't mean by this that Java programmers are dumb. I meant that Python programmers are smart. It's a lot of work to learn a new programming language. And people don't learn Python because it will get them a job; they learn it because they genuinely like to program and aren't satisfied with the languages they already know.
Which makes them exactly the kind of programmers companies should want to hire. Hence what, for lack of a better name, I'll call the Python paradox: if a company chooses to write its software in a comparatively esoteric language, they'll be able to hire better programmers, because they'll attract only those who cared enough to learn it. And for programmers the paradox is even more pronounced: the language to learn, if you want to get a good job, is a language that people don't learn merely to get a job.
Only a few companies have been smart enough to realize this so far. But there is a kind of selection going on here too: they're exactly the companies programmers would most like to work for. Google, for example. When they advertise Java programming jobs, they also want Python experience.
A friend of mine who knows nearly all the widely used languages uses Python for most of his projects. He says the main reason is that he likes the way source code looks. That may seem a frivolous reason to choose one language over another. But it is not so frivolous as it sounds: when you program, you spend more time reading code than writing it. You push blobs of source code around the way a sculptor does blobs of clay. So a language that makes source code ugly is maddening to an exacting programmer, as clay full of lumps would be to a sculptor.
At the mention of ugly source code, people will of course think of Perl. But the superficial ugliness of Perl is not the sort I mean. Real ugliness is not harsh-looking syntax, but having to build programs out of the wrong concepts. Perl may look like a cartoon character swearing, but there are cases where it surpasses Python conceptually.
So far, anyway. Both languages are of course moving targets. But they share, along with Ruby (and Icon, and Joy, and J, and Lisp, and Smalltalk) the fact that they're created by, and used by, people who really care about programming. And those tend to be the ones who do it well.
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
This comes from experience, I work on multiple networks and have been through more than one web migration. I tell ya, the one thing that bugs me most is short sidedness, these programmers who are very intelligent and write scripts to prove to the world that they are smart. However they forget to document because why should you document something that works? You take those 20 line snippits and after 3 years or so you have about 100 of them in your environment, something breaks and all hell breaks loose for days because your replacement has to grep through all your code while you are unavailable.
Standard, Commented, well structured code is what I look for. You show me code examples that are easy to read and commented well. Also show me a positive attitude and have musical talent and you are hired.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
You've never used java before, have you?
Badass Resumes
I cant understand any of those, you insensitive clod!
a) I for one welcome our new programming challenges
:-)
b) In Soviet Russia the programmers know math
c)
1. Hire programmer
2. ?????
3. Pay salary!
OK, did I pass the test?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
crap, crap, crap. I hit every one of those points. Self driven learning, always exploring new forms of technology and then applying it to the current business, etc. etc. Maybe if I hadn't been so good, my hands would still work and I wouldn't be living with constant pain up to my elbows. What's ironic is I left my father's rigging business (machinery moving) because I saw so many people around me losing fingers, damaging their limbs and back etc.. and I wanted to go do something where I wouldn't be injured on the job. Since I had been programming in high school, I thought hey, this is not a bad career. You work indoors, you're not covered in grease, you don't breathe toxic chemicals and you aren't going to get injured by heavy machinery falling on you.
Ha.
You find a company that's interviewing, walk in, kill a guy in the lobby wearing a suit. Steal his suit, his resume, and his stupid grin. Go interview in his place, steal his job, steal his wife, kids, house, and life.
And that's how I got my job.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
You're a clever one but I'm afraid your sig blew your meticulously constructed cover.
A really big disadvantage with C++ is that it relies heavily on library packages which means that the code may be very hard to port between systems.
C is sufficient for most uses when it comes to low-level programming. The code is also a lot easier to read than C++ unless the programmer is really obscure about it. And if you plan to write device drivers for Linux you have to do it in C and not C++. (OK, you probably CAN, but you will probably end up doing more work managing the C++ interfacing and management than it's worth)
And NO! a CS degree will not prove that you are a really good programmer - it only proves that you were able to pass the minimum requirements to get that grade. Experience is worth a lot more than a degree. It is as important to learn yesterday's languages and their pitfalls as it is to learn modern languages - or you will repeat the same mistakes made by programmers in a different language. For being bashed as an unsuitable language experience in Basic is still not an disadvantage - but the experience must be to learn it's shortcomings and not only the language. C has it's shortcomings in that you can do whatever you like - but the pitfall is that you can code buffer overflows. However sometimes you WANT to do "unorthodox" things and then you have to resolve to C or assembly. With Cobol experience there is something new to learn - that the language is designed for business tasks. Here you may learn the Cobol way of defining data records. This is really useful whenever you want to code a package that is going to exchange data with a system written in Cobol. (Yes they still exists - and will probably still exist for several years or even decades to come...)
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.