> On Wednesday 19 April 2006 16:32, L505 wrote: > > > I didn't say pure Pascal programmers with no other skills. > > Of course you didn't say *that*. But it still sounds like you are very > focused on language skills. Language skills are much less important > than people usually think.
Yeah, I'll hire an electrical engineer with no prior programming experience.. that's going to work. And when he comes in the first day I'll set up some e-books for him to read about Pascal "learn Delphi in 24 hours" and he will magically be a Pascal programmer in one day. If he knows English and math, surely he'll figure out Pascal in a few days. Learning all the ins and outs of Pascal takes several years, not a few days. Especially since languages are always improving and are not static. Am I going to hire someone with no Pascal language skills and pay him an hourly wage to learn Pascal, on my behalf? No. Business would probably go broke. Unless I'm in the business of teaching programming. So you are going to hire someone with Java skills and waste your salary having the guy learn Pascal for 6 months, and even after 6 months he won't be an expert? You are going to pay the guy an hourly wage to learn Pascal, when he should have done that on his own time first and become an expert before applying at the job? Sure Pascal and C and Ada are close languages, but please if I'm creating desktop software don't give me a Perl expert or a PHP expert who knows only Perl and PHP. Since Perl and PHP are not created for Desktop software applications, language skills do matter - and they are specific. There aren't going to be any popular Perl GUI software applications out there so I'm not going to hire a Perl expert if I'm a desktop software shop using Delphi/FPC as a compiler to create Desktop software. I would hire a PHP/Perl programmer who has interest in Pascal if I was doing web programming for FPC though. Lots of common knowledge between http there that is needed. But he must have interest in the Pascal language and can't be a Perl/PHP zealot who believes Perl/PHP are the answer to every question. > > > most > > pascal programmers know databases, Assembly, and C. They also usually > > know at least one scripting language such as PHP. > > It is *not* about knowing a language (or two, or more). Wow.. really? > > Knowing about stones won't give you the ability to build a house. > Unfortunately most people in the software business seem to think it > does. It doesn't. It's that simple. > > Software development is not about *where* to put this or that statement, > it is much more about the *why*: In the end it's math, logic and > abstraction (among some others). A particular language is just one way > to express those. Particular languages are not just expressions - they are built for different purposes. Try shipping a desktop GUI software application done in Perl. Ever seen one? > > Of course, having some knowledge helps to get a project started, but > this is too short-term thinking. I even learned by observation that > having knowledge (especially about C-like languages) actually seems to > hurt. I've found having knowledge about C really helps, because living in a sheltered little Pascal world with shortstrings and no ansistrings is where Pascal *may* be right now if we hadn't had C to learn from. But I'm sure someone would have eventually come up with a pchar/shortstring combination like ansistrings at some point, even if C was not created. That's essentially what an ansistring is - a pchar/shortstring combined. I'm not sure how ansistrings originated, but I'm guessing it was someone who had C and Pascal experience or knowledge who said "can we have a pchar with all the advantages of a shortstring? let's call it an ansistring". > And hell, I practically learned Java in a couple of days. I always laugh at this. You learned it. You learned what? You learned the basic Java grammar. You don't know a thing about java though. You just know the grammar. You don't know 1000 libraries that sun has created. You haven't studied each and every one. And you cannot possibly apply for a Java job if your friend bob there HAS studied 1000 Java libraries. You don't have a chance. > Anything else from that point on consists in looking up the > documentation on which class I may need. > > Well, I don't consider being able to successfully scan a telephon book > for a particalur name a special skill. I just expect people to be > bright enough to do *that*. Are my expectations set way too high here? > > > I plan to hire/pay Pascal programmers at some point for future > > commercial projects. Who will I hire? Probably the folks that have > > worked with me on open source projects before. > > Yes, that might be a good start. But you miss the main point: that these > people showed motivation and you may even be able to judge their > general "software-engineering" abilities (how they designed their > projects, modularized it, how they managed it, etc.pp). Any specific > language skills are just /not/ important, believe. Of course, the > willingness to do it in a different language might be. Language skills are important, because some languages are designed for only one purpose. The type of language you use tells a lot about yourself. If you use C you probably build a lot of desktop software or command line utilities. If you use Perl you probably build a lot of shell scripts. If you use Perl and C and Pascal, you probably know a lot about shell scripts, desktop software, and OS Api's. Since the languages you use tell a lot about you, you can in fact pick a person out of a crowd by looking at what languages he uses. It's not the only thing to look at. You would then look at his existing code and see: has he made hodgepodge messes of code, or has he modularized everything in neat manner? Of course language skills are not the only thing you look for. I've seen PHP programmers who know how to program websites, but they don't know a thing about desktop software. They know http and they know HTML, but they haven't a clue about OS Api's. This is because PHP is geared toward web programming. When PHP gets a compiler for native applications, then I would consider hiring a PHP programmer to build desktop software. Until then, I would not hire a pure PHP/Perl programmer if he only knew that language. Because he knew a language geared toward web programming, not desktop software. Even if he knew a lot about how to modularize PHP pages into nice organized web pages, I wouldn't pay him an hourly wage if he didn't know something about Pascal, OS Api's, Compilers if he was going to be working for a desktop software shop. He may be able to learn the basics of Pascal and the basics of some Pascal libraries in a few months, but why in the world would I pay him, on my behalf, and hourly wage, to learn Pascal? That is not a ROI. _______________________________________________ fpc-other maillist - [email protected] http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-other
