4 ms·

There are just not many developers who have any experience with Delphi, and often if they do, it's not recent (as in living) experience. It's a whole lot easier

by Aloha 4y ago

There are just not many developers who have any experience with Delphi, and often if they do, it's not recent (as in living) experience. It's a whole lot easier to find C# people, who have been writing C# every day for the last X years. I don't understand why this conceptually is so hard to understand - I know some very obsolete, and arcane shit, some of it, I'm the only person I know who has even a modicum of familiarity with it, as these technologies were no longer in common use by the late 90's (and I suspect most of the other people who still know it, are either, about to retire, retired, or dead). If you put out a req with that experience as a requirement, you're not gonna find people for it, no matter the money offered, or the hiring process. I've not seen anything that'd lead me to think anyone is expecting 10's here, I think even finding 4's with Delphi experience - just based on the responses to this post, is very very hard.

cxr 4y ago
> I don't understand why this conceptually is so hard to understand I understand it fully: > If you put out a req with that experience as a requirement, you're not gonna find people for it You're making _my_ point, dude. That's a stupid req. You said it yourself that the N-months-to-productivity problem (which is par for the course anywhere) is not actually a consequence of language but rather of domain familiarity or business processes or whatever. Again: not a surprise. So whether/if it takes two to ten months to see productivity from your hires no matter which language you're working in, then it's silly to lament the difficulty of being able to hire developers who can write Delphi on day one. You don't even need that!
- magicalhippo 4y ago
  > then it's silly to lament the difficulty of being able to hire developers who can write Delphi on day one. You don't even need that! This much is true. However this is also not the reason why we find it difficult to hire. We don't require someone who can write Delphi from day one. We require someone who is willing to write Delphi from day one. Obviously past Delphi experience will make that much more likely. But we've tried listing "C#/C++/Java or similar" in the suggested experience part, and most of the people with such backgrounds are not willing to learn Delphi it turns out.
  - cxr 4y ago
    > This much is true. However this is also not the reason why we find it difficult to hire. Cool. Would have been nice then to not have brought it up ad nauseam as if it was relevant, rather than a massive distraction masquerading as a mic drop-worthy argument ender.

by Aloha 4y ago

cxr 4y ago

> I don't understand why this conceptually is so hard to understand I understand it fully: > If you put out a req with that experience as a requirement, you're not gonna find people for it You're making _my_ point, dude. That's a stupid req. You said it yourself that the N-months-to-productivity problem (which is par for the course anywhere) is not actually a consequence of language but rather of domain familiarity or business processes or whatever. Again: not a surprise. So whether/if it takes two to ten months to see productivity from your hires no matter which language you're working in, then it's silly to lament the difficulty of being able to hire developers who can write Delphi on day one. You don't even need that!

magicalhippo 4y ago
> then it's silly to lament the difficulty of being able to hire developers who can write Delphi on day one. You don't even need that! This much is true. However this is also not the reason why we find it difficult to hire. We don't require someone who can write Delphi from day one. We require someone who is willing to write Delphi from day one. Obviously past Delphi experience will make that much more likely. But we've tried listing "C#/C++/Java or similar" in the suggested experience part, and most of the people with such backgrounds are not willing to learn Delphi it turns out.
- cxr 4y ago
  > This much is true. However this is also not the reason why we find it difficult to hire. Cool. Would have been nice then to not have brought it up ad nauseam as if it was relevant, rather than a massive distraction masquerading as a mic drop-worthy argument ender.