I think, this thread is slightly moving away from Linux and moving towards programming skills and hiring. Should we tag it as [OT]?
On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 10:42 AM, Suraj Kumar <su...@careergear.in> wrote: > Measuring one's language skills is of use only for gauging if the > candidate might be useful to fulfill, also, the short term needs (which, > usually, is to maintain/extend/fix an already developed solution). Agreed. > Measuring based on language skills is of only a cosmetic use from the point > of view of hiring a long-term asset for a company. +1 > Perl (or C, for that matter) doesn't lay out things on a plate. Perl > requires understanding of core OS concepts before one can build real world > applications for use in a production environment. I Agree, and agree to disagree as well :-) I agree that you need to get your OS fundamentals strong if you really need to code well in C/PERL. The disagreement is on the fact that when I want someone to be strong in Fundamentals, OS Concepts are NOT the only fundamentals. Linking back to your homepage - System Thinking is a good example of fundamentals. > PHP, Java, etc., OTOH, > makes it infinitely easy for anybody to program and build seemingly real > world applications, allowing all sorts of people to write all sorts of > things and still get away with it. In Java, it is the VM that externalizes > problems, as though, it is someone else's to handle. Again, Agreed and disagreed. I agree that Java, .NET and to some extent PHP, and others as well, do hide the OS implementations. This doesn't mean that I can write rubbish and expect the VM to take care of everything. A well experienced Java (or .NET) guy can guide you though how a memory leak could occur in a Java program, how to use a profiler to debug the memory leak, how threads get tangled causing deadlocks, etc... Sounds familiar? As I said earlier, we try to solve a different set of problems with different tools. We don't necessarily take care of freeing up the memory in Java, as we do in C. But, this doesn't mean that you can create anything you want. We still need to make sure that the Garbage Collector (GC) will be able to handle the memory on it's own, by coding correctly. A bad programmer will be the same across all languages. > I meant to say, thus, if you come across a perl programmer who has built > real world applications, chances are their fundamentals will be strong > (which, of course, you'd be testing in the interview). Their fundamentals > are strong because the language forced them to rethink their approach at > every juncture of their own skill development. The definition of what you mean by fundamentals makes a difference here. I would go down to "Systems Thinking" for example as a fundamental. OS Concepts, ... well an extremely added advantage? Unfortunately, *Nix and other "time shared" scheduling OSs are not the only one type lying around. > That said, likewise, one > also comes across a whole bunch of "perl scripting" people who have not > written anything more than 300 lines of relevant code... but then, again, > it is very easy to spot them. Spot on. Agreed +1 How come the candidates who come for interviews, never even realize this? >> IMHO, the problem isn't with Java/Perl, its a problem with your >> question paper / interview panel. > > Absolutely agree. But tell me, from your experience, do you have a perfect > interview panel who all ask relevant, core testing questions? :) pass.... :-) Actually, I have had identifying good panelists for myself. -- Natarajan _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
