Re: True faiths ( was Re: The true faith )

["Kevin McFarlane" <kevin@atech.globalnet.co.uk>]

"Erik Naggum" <erik@naggum.net> wrote in message
news:3219936759616091@naggum.net...
> * "Kevin McFarlane" <kevin@atech.globalnet.co.uk>
> | It's always going to be hard for something new to get a look in.  There
> | is, of course, the economic reason that, for example, C/C++ guys are two
> | a penny but Eiffel and Smalltalk guys aren't.
>

Hi Erik

>   This is one of the most misleading abuses of statistics around.  Just
>   because the probability that you hit a C++ programmer if you throw a
rock
>   into a crowd is very high, does not mean that the probability that he
can
>   replace _your_ C++ programmer is any higher than finding a replacement
>   Eiffel or Smalltalk programmer.  Because you have to weed through tons
of
>   idiots who only _claim_ they know C++, the effort required to find a
real
>   replacement may be significantly lower for Eiffel or Smalltalk.

But the Eiffel or Smalltalk programmer might cost you more (in salary), as
there are fewer of them to go around.

> Besides,
>   if you can find a good programmer, chances are very good that he will be
>   able to learn any programming language you use reasonably well in the
>   time it would take to find a good C++ programmer.  And learning from the
>   sources of the previous programmer is a lot easier than learning the
>   language from scratch in a general, application-independent way.

I agree with you. And I would like that to be the case but unfortuantely it
isn't. Employers are obsessed with buzzwords. Many of the buzzwords they're
obsessed about can be learnt to a useful level within a few days by
competent programmers. But I guess it's less effort for recruiters to
concentrate on buzzwords than to assess candidates in more depth.

A friend of mine who was involved in hiring told me a story about this. Two
candidates were offered jobs. The first had all the buzzwords and impressed
the senior manager. My friend was sceptical but the senior manager won on
that occasion. The second candidate had no buzzwords but exuded competence.
The senior manager was not impressed but my friend was. This time my friend
won.

The first candidate was hopelesly out of his depth and left within a week.
The second candidate turned out to be one of their star programmers.

>
>   I have actually witnessed this.  A company I worked for got a new
manager
>   level that was completely superfluous, so the new manager had to prove
to
>   herself that she had a real job, and spent a lot of time arguing against
>   using languages that were not mainstream, and basically made it hard to
>   use anything but Java, and many good people quit.  Then a Java man got
>   seriously ill.  She was unable to replace him in the 5 months he was
>   away.  The other Java men could not do his work.  To her amazement,
>   choice of language mattered less than the other skills the programmers
>   had.

Yes. This is true. BTW, have you read this? It supports your case.

"Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage"
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html

One of its counterintuitive findings is this:

"A study quoted Myths and Methods: a Guide to Software Productivity by David
T. Fisher (Prentice-Hall, 1991) found that the factor Personnel Capability,
i.e. general talent and energy of the programmers, counted for a score of
4.18 in a productivity prediciton equation. This was by far the largest
factor; the next largest was Product Complexity, with a score of only 2.36.
The factor (Programming) Language Experience, i.e. experience with a
specific software skill, had the smallest score among the 15 factors
studied, with a score of only 1.20. Fisher comments:


'The relatively small impact of language knowledge is an important fact
which is not intuitively obvious. Judging by advertisements for programmers
it would seem that [IT] managers tend to overemphasize specific language
experience.'"




> The conclusion from this story that this manager actually arrived
>   at was that it was bad to have skilled programmers -- she alone should
>   make the design decisions and programmers would simply implement them.
>   She could now return to her policy of using only mainstream languages
and
>   hire only unskilled programmers who lied about knowing a language.  As
>   far as I know, nothing interesting has happened at that company for a
>   long time.
>
Unfortunately, this seems to be how most companies operate. And I can't see
it changing anytime soon.