Java > Scala

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Paulo Pinto" <pjmlp at progtools.org> wrote in message 
news:jb4lj2$ulq$1 at digitalmars.com...
>
> In my line of business we only allow employees with proper university 
> background to enter the company, and even so, we get developers which I 
> keep asking if they learned anything at all while at the university.
>
> Even for them Java is a very complex language. I already spent quite some 
> hours explaining programming concepts that made me think if I was
> explaining programming to children. But then again, I don't have any 
> control about the hiring process in these companies.
>


That's just like complaining "I went to Japan and every time I asked for a 
'taco', they gave me octopus instead!"

Your company is getting *exactly* what they're looking for. Universities DO 
NOT create programmers. Period. (*Especially* liberal arts schools.) Most CS 
courses don't even *try* to create programmers. Hell, half of them are 
taught by people who can barely code (I have stories...). One could argue 
that universities either should or shouldn't try to create programmers, but 
either way: If you're specifically looking for "proper university 
background" then naturally you're going to have to sort through a lot of 
academic weenies *if you're lucky*. If you're not particularly lucky, you'll 
get a bunch of the millions upon millions who went through the revolving 
academic door either: A. Merely because society told them they should get a 
degree, or B. Because mommy and daddy paid them to go.


You can be sure of one thing: If the majority of a candidate's experience is 
in Uni, then they don't know what they're doing.

Obviously that's not to say that there aren't good or even great programmers 
who have been through college/uni/academia/etc. Hell, Walter and Andrei are 
among the best programmers I know. The point is, you're optimizing for the 
wrong metric, and that's giving you truckloads of both false positives and 
false negatives. You're winding up with exactly the "tako" you've asked for.