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quality is still hard to measure. speaking from experience, i've always had passion and personal projects, etc, but i used to be a sucky programmer. now i feel
by diN0bot 17y ago
quality is still hard to measure.
speaking from experience, i've always had passion and personal projects, etc, but i used to be a sucky programmer. now i feel like i've mastered certain things, but i'm still developing and getting better.
for one thing, quality comes from sustained effort and committment. i've been working full time on startups for a while. that's a hell of a lot different than someone doing a different weekend toy project every month.
i'm friends with some pretty passionate "hackers," and i'm definitely not knocking that kind of activity---heck, i have side projects sometimes, too. but there's a big difference between hacking and building something serious. toying with tons of APIs and langauges doesn't make someone a good programmer.
finding a good programmer is still hard. even if programmers were completely honest, and the metrics all objective, would they even have the language to explain to business guys that they were good programmers, both in technical proficiency and quality? it's not impossible, but it's quite difficult.
- csytan 17y agoI find that for me, side projects are very beneficial because they give me absolute freedom to try new things without stepping on co-workers toes. I have to agree that metrics don't tell the whole story. It really depends on what the programmer is looking for. Some people may be attracted to new features & complexity in their projects, while others look to design a small simple project.
- ldh 17y agoAgreed. Often the worst part of my day job is having to worry about what might confuse or frustrate co-workers.
- diN0bot 17y agotrying new things is great. it's also extremely different, or rather limited, than what is needed for a start up. that is, you need A LOT more than the desire and experience of toying with new things. toying is part of the inventor spirit and different projects need different things. one project might be ok with one of the mockups architects make. another project might need the life sized building. and so on in between, changing as the project grows.