I agree about upgrading the bean counters or at least adjusting their attitude. The fact is that the productivity gap between an excellent developer and a merely competent one can be enormous, a factor of 10-20, and it can vary depending on the task. I believe this is a finding arising out of formal research, not just anecdotal (sorry, don't have the reference). In fact (and this is anecdotal now) in a small agile shop an even slightly sub-par developer can be a net drain on team productivity, and you may not diagnose this until training time is over, crunch time has come and gone, the developer has moved on and you now need to do the first major upgrade of the subsystem they wrote.
You don't see anything like these extremes in most professions (say, counting beans), so bean counters can find it hard to accept. I'd also echo Barney and say that years of CF experience is much less important than years of development experience. I would expect a top notch developer who had never used CF to be teaching *me* things about CF after 3-6 months. And finally, years of development experience is much less important than years of actively pursuing professional excellence. For example, a CF developer of 10 years experience who has never heard of patterns and never played with Java integration isn't worth much IMHO. NOT because I expect them to use patterns, or even OO - but if they are actively seeking after best practices, the WILL be aware of these things, WILL have investigated them and WILL have coherent reasons for using/not using them. So, to finally give my answer to the question: developer A = webmaster type who can "do" ColdFusion but doesn't really get development as a profession developer B = CS grad with solid skills but maybe a bit of a plodder developer C = CS grad with talent and great attitude developer D = Zen master with 10 years of the pursuit of excellence Productivity ratio B:C:D ~ 1:2:4 What about developer A? After six months, D will have mentored A, B and C, done his/her own work, collaborated with C on improving the teams practices, completely rewritten all of A's code, and participated in interviewing for A's replacement. So A's contribution is that D is now very tired. Jaime Metcher > -----Original Message----- > From: Barney Boisvert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Thursday, 17 May 2007 3:37 AM > To: CF-Talk > Subject: Re: New developer vs. Veteran developer > > > If the bean counters want to quantify that, you might be well advised > to find some new bean counters. ; ) My opinion is that language > idioms are pretty simple, but core development concepts are quite > complex. As such, I'd generally rather hire a developer with > experience building the types of applications I'm building in a > different language over a CF developer who is new to the arena I'm > building apps in. > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Upgrade to Adobe ColdFusion MX7 The most significant release in over 10 years. Upgrade & see new features. http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion?sdid=RVJR Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:278365 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
