Tx :) I want more laurent laffont :) Stef
On Apr 9, 2011, at 9:34 AM, laurent laffont wrote: > Hi, > > I discovered Smalltalk and Pharo almost three years ago and just after read > Chad Fowler book "Passionate Programmer" (1st edition title was "My job went > to India"). These have changed my developer life, how I perceive software and > that great technology is fun, people doing it more. You're a cool community > and I'm proud to be there. > > Now I've started an aside (paid :) independent developer activity thanks to a > cool guy. That would not be possible without all the stuff I learn every day > from the community and the urge to continue you give me. > > Each time I've made a step forward (open a blog, write ProfStef, fix bugs, > create PharoCasts) I've been amazed that the generated effects were those > described in Passionate Programmer (go read it !) The last chapter is "Go > independent" so now I need the sequel ;) > > Special big thank you to Stéphane Ducasse - you're crazy :) Long live Pharo ! > > > PS: nice piece of Passionate Programmer: > > When I was in India weeding through hundreds of candidates for only > tens of jobs, the interview team was exhausting itself and running out > of time because of a poor interview-to-hire hit rate. Heads hurting and > eyes red, we held a late-night meeting to discuss a strategic change in the > way we would go through the candidates. We had to either optimize the > process so we could interview more people or somehow interview better > people (or both). With what little was left of my voice after twelve straight > hours of trying to drag answers out of dumbstruck programmers, I argued > for adding Smalltalk to the list of keywords our headhunters were using > to search their résumé database. But, nobody knows Smalltalk in India, cried > the human resources director. That was my point. Nobody knew it, and > programming in Smalltalk was a fundamentally different experience than > programming in Java. The varying experience would give candidates a > different level of expectations, and the dynamic nature of the Smalltalk > environment would reshape the way a Java programmer would approach > a problem. My hope was that these factors would encourage a level of > technical maturity that I hadn’t been seeing from the candidates I’d met so > far. > The addition of Smalltalk to the requirements list yielded a candidate pool > that was tiny in contrast to our previous list. These people were diamonds > in the rough. They really understood object-oriented programming. They > were aware that Java isn’t the idealistic panacea it’s sometimes made out > to be. Many of them loved to program! Where have you been for the past two > weeks? we thought. > Unfortunately, our ability to attract these developers for the salaries we > were able to pay was limited. They were calling the shots, and most of > them chose to stay where they were or to keep looking for a new job. > Though we failed to recruit many of them, we learned a valuable recruit- > ing lesson: we were more likely to extend offers to candidates with diverse > (and even unorthodox) experience than to those whose experiences were > homogenous. My explanation is that either the good people seek out > diversity, because they love to learn new things, or being forced into alien > experiences and environments created more mature, well-rounded soft- > ware developers. I suspect it’s a little of both, but regardless of why it > works, we learned that it works. I still use this technique when looking > for developers. > > > Laurent Laffont - @lolgzs > > Pharo Smalltalk Screencasts: http://www.pharocasts.com/ > Blog: http://magaloma.blogspot.com/ > Developer group: http://cara74.seasidehosting.st > >
