On Wednesday 08 July 2009 17:54:12 Prashant Verma wrote: > I will appreciate if other people who have thought about this issue > could contribute their opinion. If anyone has links to online > articles which address this issue or online training programs, that > would be very helpful.
I have thought deeply on this issue and face the problems you mention on a daily basis. Solution is very simple. The candidate should join an open source project. If he perseveres for more than three months he will have well rounded communication skills - a will be a better programmer. If he is unable to cut it, then he is unfit to be a programmer and better off as a coder in some sweatshop where the only communication skill is to say 'yes sir'. In open source programming, communication is through mailing lists, ticket tracking systems, IRC and wikis. On a mailing list, if the question is not formulated properly or the relevant information regarding platform, version, error reports etc not given, the poster gets ignored or flamed. bug reports and patches are taken seriously and inadequete reports, buggy patches, patches without tests and documentation are mercilessly attacked. IRC is extremely helpful - if one knows how to communicate. And one learns fast. And messing up a wiki page is the easiest way to learn how to format one. the main problem is that India is still a highly feudal society where people in authority cannot be questioned. In open source, authority comes with contribution and even the geekiest geek would not dream of getting upset if he is questioned. using this method I have been very successful in churning out employable people - from very unpromising material. There have been failures, because some people are incapable of learning. -- regards Kenneth Gonsalves Associate NRC-FOSS http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/ -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
