Hehe, it's fun google stalking everyone. :) Anyway, my point wasn't to say "Person X" is more awesome than "Person Y". Experience is not the only thing that counts by any stretch, although I certainly don't agree with Nicholas J's point. If I was going to work with some other folks, or even just co-brand with them, one thing that I'd be concerned about is that they had some experience dealing with clients, working from home, and acting as a contractor or freelancer with some professionalism. I've certainly known great programmers who really didn't function very well outside of a salaried and structured office environment. That doesn't make them *worse*, but it does make them unsuitable.
As for whether programming experience matters, well I think probably what matters is overall programming experience, not ruby experience specifically. There is an idea amongst younger programmers (I know, because I used to share it when that was me), that beardy old programmers are conservative pains in the ass who just don't appreciate your mad skillz. The counter argument to this on goes like this: *"Ok, so you've finished Uni, and you've been coding professionally for a year or two. I bet you're pretty hot shit, right? Of course you are. I also bet you learned heaps since getting out of uni and getting on the job. Of course you did, you're a great guy and a very fast learner right. So, you're learning is finished now I take it? From this day on you wont learn a single new thing, except perhaps a new library or tool, and your programming will never improve. Yes I know you're a great guy and a fast learner, but that's all over now, you're totally finished learning after your first two years of work and you can just sit back and code for a living."* The point is somewhat facetious of course in that our hypothetical junior programmer doesn't really expect that their learning is abruptly about to stop, so given that, it's a given that the annoying beardy old programmer in the corner has *kept on learning for the extra decade or two of experience* that they have over our junior. It's sometimes hard to see how that learning could be relavant, because it may be have been in some language or environment that doesn't seem trendy anymore. But, of course our junior is adaptive as well and will no doubt be working in a new language and environment in 20 years time and yet they still expect to learn. So, with 12 years or so of commercial experience, I feel like I sit in the middle here somewhere. I see the person who's just starting out, and I think that's totally fine, as long as he doesn't think he's a god who know everything I know, and is happy to ask for advice to avoid making mistakes I've already made. Likewise, I see the programmer in the corner who has been doing this professionally since the 80's, presumably working in Assembly and COBOL and punching cards and goodness knows what else, and it seems hard to imagine that his experience from back in the stone age has any relevance to me, because after all I'm experienced now and I've got mad skillz right? But obviously it follows from the above that he must has something to teach me too, and I have no more right to be an arrogant git than our junior coder does. So, my ideal work environment, if I was to work more with others than I do know, would include folks smarter and more experienced than me, providing they were happy to share their skills. And it would also include folks less experienced than me, providing they were humble enough to realise that they don't know everything yet. cheers, Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en.
