If you want to hire a good programmer, get a good programmer to interview the candidate. The interview should take about three seconds: any longer than that, an

If you want to hire a good programmer, get a good programmer to interview the candidate. The interview should take about three seconds: any longer than that, and your candidate's a bust. Real programmers recognize each other on the spot, like vampires. It has something to do with a look in the eye coupled with total arrogance: it's hard to explain, but over the course of my career (30 years) I've found that those programmers I've hired on instinct, just because I recognized what they were immediately, were the only ones who ended up being totally capable.