How to recognise a good programmer?
Daniel has written a really great article about how to recognize good programmers. Here is a summary of the traits (I have marked the ones that I truly relate with, and added my comments):
Positive indicators:
- Passionate about technology
- Programs as a hobby
- Will talk your ear off on a technical subject if encouraged [Mukul: This is an absolute necessity to identify a "hacker". They are so passionate about what they do that they will talk about it for more time than you want them to. I love this feature.]
- Significant (and often numerous) personal side-projects over the years
- Learns new technologies on his/her own
- Opinionated about which technologies are better for various usages [Mukul: I have seen some of the technical guys getting upset when you tell them do use a certain technology or tell them to do things in a certain way - this is good. They should be opinionated.]
- Very uncomfortable about the idea of working with a technology he doesn’t believe to be “right”
- Clearly smart, can have great conversations on a variety of topics
- Started programming long before university/work
- Has some hidden “icebergs”, large personal projects under the CV radar
- Knowledge of a large variety of unrelated technologies (may not be on CV)
Negative indicators:
- Programming is a day job
- Don’t really want to “talk shop”, even when encouraged to
- Learns new technologies in company-sponsored courses
- Happy to work with whatever technology you’ve picked, “all technologies are good”
- Doesn’t seem too smart
- Started programming at university
- All programming experience is on the CV
- Focused mainly on one or two technology stacks (e.g. everything to do with developing a java application), with no experience outside of it
Labels: code, coding, hacker, languages, programmer, programming, technology
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