4 ms·

I have not yet resorted to that. My concern (which is possibly unfounded) is that it would take significant investment before the productivity gain made it wort

I have not yet resorted to that. My concern (which is possibly unfounded) is that it would take significant investment before the productivity gain made it worth it. Then you have the risk that a newly trained person would leave the company as well. Also, I am not sure that a good developer from another language (like ruby/python) would consider using PHP on a day-to-day basis due to the perception of php as a crappy language.

joshdev 15y ago
It's really not a bad way to go. You may still get reactions like you've come to expect from developers, but a sign of a good developer is whether after having that knee jerk reaction, they start asking about your technology choices and how you've implemented things. Essentially you want a generalist who is technology agnostic and is willing to roll up their sleeves and get to work in any codebase. PHP isn't that different from other languages and after a week spent learning the nuances with a little training help they should be able to be productive.
- apinstein 15y ago
  That's a great point, too! Thanks for the great responses.
  - smokeyj 15y ago
    Local PHP hacker here, what kind of opportunities you got? I feel like I've seen PHOCOA before, PHP works atlanta?
    - apinstein 15y ago
      I'd love to chat. Please reach out to me - not sure the most proper way to do that in an HN thread. I am apinstein on GitHub or check out tourbuzz.net contact page. I was at php|works Atlanta, but I didn't present. I have presented it at ATLPHP before. I've presented on other topics as well though and usually at least mention that I created phocoa during my bio. Our position isn't just PHP actually, but that is our primary back-end language. Probably makes the other commenters' posts about multi-language experience all the more relevant. We do a lot of front-end work in Javascript and we use ruby a decent amount as well (rake, chef, capistrano).
alexgartrell 15y ago
I'd argue it's completely unfounded. PHP is the easiest language in the world for someone who is reasonable at other scripting languages, because there aren't very many new or weird paradigms that it forces on you. I last touched PHP in high school but haven't had any problems readjusting to it here at Facebook. In fact, I'd wager that very few of the people in Facebook's bootcamp program right now came with any of the experience you're looking for.
- apinstein 15y ago
  Thanks for your thoughts! I can see your point. I think mainly I was trying to get away without having to do training, but clearly that isn't working out so well. Can I ask you what your language of choice was before FB and would you have taken a php job somewhere that wasn't FB?
  - alexgartrell 15y ago
    If I had to choose I'd probably say C or Python, but language wasn't a very strong influence on my job choice (other than knowing that I wanted to avoid Java). That Fog Creek has done well with Wasabi [1] says to me that language is not the most important thing for most candidates. [1] http://blog.fogcreek.com/the-origin-of-wasabi/ http://blog.fogcreek.com/the-origin-of-wasabi/
  - d0m 15y ago
    When you say "having to do training".. A great programmer don't need "you" to do the training. Just give him/her a couple of days to read your codebase and learn the language. Anyway, even if it was the best PHP programmer, you'd still have to walk through your architecture and important design decision. So, at this high level, it's not important at all whether the guy/girl understand the inner details of PHP. And, might I add, PHP is so easy to understand and read.. You don't even have to know PHP to read the majority of code written in it ;-) Compare that to, say, haskell or scheme, where it's a whole new paradigm. This is a crucial blunder from all no-tech people I know who are trying to hire great programmers. Seek Great Programmers, not Great "insert a language" Programmer! A good programmer will be good in any languages; a bad one will be bad in all languages.
planb 15y ago
Even developers that know PHP inside out have to learn your framework first. I guess a good developer would pick up PHP along the way. As a side note, I never understand when someone says learning Objective-C makes iOS programming harder for someone who does not know the language in contrast to Java developers which can directly jump into Android development. The hard part is to learn the framework (Cocoa Touch vs. Android API), not the language.
pnathan 15y ago
Please don't hire based on knowledge of a language or a framework. It's a bad habit, because the best software engineers span languages and frameworks. I am not a super-dev, but I can write code in an unfamiliar language in a day or two (non-idiomatic, of course). Better people than I can do better, I am sure. I am sure you will be able to find great engineers if you open up your playing field.
- chrisbolt 15y ago
  You may be able to write code, but can you understand code that was already written by someone who knows all of the idiosyncrasies of a language you're not familiar with?
  - pnathan 15y ago
    Yes, if I have time to dig into it and access to documentation. Stackoverflow really helps too. :-) Of course a quick glance at a program in an unfamiliar non-procedural language defeats me.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
Homunculiheaded 15y ago
I would actually say that the developer who has experience in a handful of languages/framework and is willing to learn php for the sake of a cool project/team/company is potentially a better developer than one that has just mastered php (note: not saying php dev == bad, but that multi-langage/framework dev that values problems over tools more typically == good). So by limiting your offering to just good php devs you may actually be driving away some of the best devs interested in working for you.
PaulHoule 15y ago
Every change of job I've made in the last 8 years has involved at least one change of language. In my mind a professional developer can pick up Perl or PHP or Cobol or Scala or whatever. If somebody's got the attitude that 'Java sucks, I only want to code Ruby', that person's not a pro in my book.
troels 15y ago
My concern (which is possibly unfounded) is that it would take significant investment before the productivity gain made it worth it. Anecdotally, I took a job as Rails developer some years back. I had zero experience with it before starting (Having worked mainly with PHP before), but because the environments are so similar (http is the same, gnu/linux is the same, mysql is the same, architecture and oop is the same etc. etc.), I was creating value after about three weeks and I would say that I was fully up to speed after something like 3 months. Consider that it can easily take the same time to get the business, the problem domain and your new colleagues to know, I'd say that the cost for my employer was close to nothing. Now, I'm not saying that anybody can do this - I consider myself a fairly good developer and beside PHP, I have tinkered with a broad spectrum of languages, which surely helped my transition. And the point isn't that Ruby is such an easy language that it can be learned in 3 weeks either (In fact, I think it is a rather complex language). What I take from my experience is that a good (and diverse) developer, with a motivation can jump from related technologies with relative ease. I do agree with your sentiment that it might be easier to sell a jump from php than to, but that is a different problem. If your project is interesting in it self, I'm sure you can find good developers who don't fret too much over what particular language they write in.
epoxyhockey 15y ago
I have not yet resorted to that. I am amused by the perception that a pro software engineer is assumed to only be proficient in the programming language they used in their last job. If an engineer is applying for your job, talk to them and make sure they are a good personality fit for your team. They are probably going to take more time understanding your dev tools and procedures than boning up on PHP.
- apinstein 15y ago
  The motive behind that wasn't about people not being skilled outside their current language (which I agree would be amusing), but that I wasn't sure trying to pitch a PHP job to ruby/python/java developers was going to be successful. I guess seeing all the PHP-bashing that happens in the world (especially on HN) made me a little gunshy about approaching high-level devs to work on our project. Fortunately thanks to some very well-made points and stories shared on this thread, I am now optimistic that I should be able to convince devs used to "better" languages that working on a PHP project could still be cool and a good learning experience. This thread has been really great for me. Thanks, HN!

joshdev 15y ago

It's really not a bad way to go. You may still get reactions like you've come to expect from developers, but a sign of a good developer is whether after having that knee jerk reaction, they start asking about your technology choices and how you've implemented things. Essentially you want a generalist who is technology agnostic and is willing to roll up their sleeves and get to work in any codebase. PHP isn't that different from other languages and after a week spent learning the nuances with a little training help they should be able to be productive.

apinstein 15y ago
That's a great point, too! Thanks for the great responses.
- smokeyj 15y ago
  Local PHP hacker here, what kind of opportunities you got? I feel like I've seen PHOCOA before, PHP works atlanta?
  - apinstein 15y ago
    I'd love to chat. Please reach out to me - not sure the most proper way to do that in an HN thread. I am apinstein on GitHub or check out tourbuzz.net contact page. I was at php|works Atlanta, but I didn't present. I have presented it at ATLPHP before. I've presented on other topics as well though and usually at least mention that I created phocoa during my bio. Our position isn't just PHP actually, but that is our primary back-end language. Probably makes the other commenters' posts about multi-language experience all the more relevant. We do a lot of front-end work in Javascript and we use ruby a decent amount as well (rake, chef, capistrano).

alexgartrell 15y ago

I'd argue it's completely unfounded. PHP is the easiest language in the world for someone who is reasonable at other scripting languages, because there aren't very many new or weird paradigms that it forces on you. I last touched PHP in high school but haven't had any problems readjusting to it here at Facebook. In fact, I'd wager that very few of the people in Facebook's bootcamp program right now came with any of the experience you're looking for.

apinstein 15y ago
Thanks for your thoughts! I can see your point. I think mainly I was trying to get away without having to do training, but clearly that isn't working out so well. Can I ask you what your language of choice was before FB and would you have taken a php job somewhere that wasn't FB?
- alexgartrell 15y ago
  If I had to choose I'd probably say C or Python, but language wasn't a very strong influence on my job choice (other than knowing that I wanted to avoid Java). That Fog Creek has done well with Wasabi [1] says to me that language is not the most important thing for most candidates. [1] http://blog.fogcreek.com/the-origin-of-wasabi/ http://blog.fogcreek.com/the-origin-of-wasabi/
- d0m 15y ago
  When you say "having to do training".. A great programmer don't need "you" to do the training. Just give him/her a couple of days to read your codebase and learn the language. Anyway, even if it was the best PHP programmer, you'd still have to walk through your architecture and important design decision. So, at this high level, it's not important at all whether the guy/girl understand the inner details of PHP. And, might I add, PHP is so easy to understand and read.. You don't even have to know PHP to read the majority of code written in it ;-) Compare that to, say, haskell or scheme, where it's a whole new paradigm. This is a crucial blunder from all no-tech people I know who are trying to hire great programmers. Seek Great Programmers, not Great "insert a language" Programmer! A good programmer will be good in any languages; a bad one will be bad in all languages.

planb 15y ago

Even developers that know PHP inside out have to learn your framework first. I guess a good developer would pick up PHP along the way. As a side note, I never understand when someone says learning Objective-C makes iOS programming harder for someone who does not know the language in contrast to Java developers which can directly jump into Android development. The hard part is to learn the framework (Cocoa Touch vs. Android API), not the language.

pnathan 15y ago

Please don't hire based on knowledge of a language or a framework. It's a bad habit, because the best software engineers span languages and frameworks. I am not a super-dev, but I can write code in an unfamiliar language in a day or two (non-idiomatic, of course). Better people than I can do better, I am sure. I am sure you will be able to find great engineers if you open up your playing field.

chrisbolt 15y ago
You may be able to write code, but can you understand code that was already written by someone who knows all of the idiosyncrasies of a language you're not familiar with?
- pnathan 15y ago
  Yes, if I have time to dig into it and access to documentation. Stackoverflow really helps too. :-) Of course a quick glance at a program in an unfamiliar non-procedural language defeats me.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

Homunculiheaded 15y ago

I would actually say that the developer who has experience in a handful of languages/framework and is willing to learn php for the sake of a cool project/team/company is potentially a better developer than one that has just mastered php (note: not saying php dev == bad, but that multi-langage/framework dev that values problems over tools more typically == good). So by limiting your offering to just good php devs you may actually be driving away some of the best devs interested in working for you.

PaulHoule 15y ago

Every change of job I've made in the last 8 years has involved at least one change of language. In my mind a professional developer can pick up Perl or PHP or Cobol or Scala or whatever. If somebody's got the attitude that 'Java sucks, I only want to code Ruby', that person's not a pro in my book.

troels 15y ago

My concern (which is possibly unfounded) is that it would take significant investment before the productivity gain made it worth it. Anecdotally, I took a job as Rails developer some years back. I had zero experience with it before starting (Having worked mainly with PHP before), but because the environments are so similar (http is the same, gnu/linux is the same, mysql is the same, architecture and oop is the same etc. etc.), I was creating value after about three weeks and I would say that I was fully up to speed after something like 3 months. Consider that it can easily take the same time to get the business, the problem domain and your new colleagues to know, I'd say that the cost for my employer was close to nothing. Now, I'm not saying that anybody can do this - I consider myself a fairly good developer and beside PHP, I have tinkered with a broad spectrum of languages, which surely helped my transition. And the point isn't that Ruby is such an easy language that it can be learned in 3 weeks either (In fact, I think it is a rather complex language). What I take from my experience is that a good (and diverse) developer, with a motivation can jump from related technologies with relative ease. I do agree with your sentiment that it might be easier to sell a jump from php than to, but that is a different problem. If your project is interesting in it self, I'm sure you can find good developers who don't fret too much over what particular language they write in.

epoxyhockey 15y ago

I have not yet resorted to that. I am amused by the perception that a pro software engineer is assumed to only be proficient in the programming language they used in their last job. If an engineer is applying for your job, talk to them and make sure they are a good personality fit for your team. They are probably going to take more time understanding your dev tools and procedures than boning up on PHP.

apinstein 15y ago
The motive behind that wasn't about people not being skilled outside their current language (which I agree would be amusing), but that I wasn't sure trying to pitch a PHP job to ruby/python/java developers was going to be successful. I guess seeing all the PHP-bashing that happens in the world (especially on HN) made me a little gunshy about approaching high-level devs to work on our project. Fortunately thanks to some very well-made points and stories shared on this thread, I am now optimistic that I should be able to convince devs used to "better" languages that working on a PHP project could still be cool and a good learning experience. This thread has been really great for me. Thanks, HN!