[ale] .NET considered harmful

Thu Mar 31 11:04:57 EDT 2011

Maybe if the article were "Why programmers shouldn't put all their eggs in
one basket", but this was "Why we don’t hire .NET programmers".   Through
the article he makes some good points, but his opinions of .net pollute his
arguments.  My point in previous posts is that if he is looking for folks
who are happy to tinker with any tech - his own attitude will be an
obstacle.  He wrote a followup article he links to at the top where he trys
to be less of an ass, but IMHO just demonstrates that he's not capable of
stopping.  So, he won't get much more attention from me...

...but, I was pondering - I wonder if there are some technologies that
really should raise red flags.  If you were hiring, and you need someone you
can trust to create good solutions, are there technologies out there that
might scare you off?  I can think of a couple that I'd have hard time
imagining  a good case for.  Lolcode... mono...

On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 8:29 AM, Wolf Halton <wolf at wolfhalton.info> wrote:

>  Did you look at the jobs section of their site?  Jerald, I think you are
> on target.  These people want to hire creatives who create in lots of ways.
>
>
> On 03/29/2011 09:09 AM, Jerald Sheets wrote:
>
> Some of this falls under the failure of education, though.
>
>  I worked at a small webhosting concern in Baton Rouge that eventually got
> to the point that we refused to hire graduates from LSU's CS department for
> much the same reasons.
>
>  LSU was turning out Pascal programmers in 1996 with no knowledge of
> networks (but a limited understanding of protocols) and couldn't
> troubleshoot anything.  They could program you under the table in Pascal,
> but had no knowledge of any other arena of programming (Assembler?  VB?
> C?...these were reserved for engineering majors and were unavailable to CS
> students except as electives)  Sure, with some work they could pick up the
> ColdFusion work and the PHP work our developers were doing, but chances were
> slim (based on our experience).  It had been proven time and time again they
> were one-trick ponies with blinders on, unwilling to change and unable to be
> employed if they didn't...USUALLY demanding huge salaries just because they
> graduated college.
>
>  I think the issue more lies in substance.
>
>  For instance, I'm a SysAdmin.  I have done a fair amount of ksh/bash and,
> thanks to Weather.com, was introduced to Perl and have been very happy
> with it since.
>
>  If I come to you for a Sysadmin job, one of the primary distinguishing
> characteristics of a "Senior" level admin is that they have a language or
> two to their credit.  No, not necessarily C or Pascal (although they may),
> but you certainly expect there to be Perl, Shell, perhaps Python, maybe even
> PHP and other "admin-y" sort of qualifications on there.  If I didn't,
> wouldn't you consider something to be not quite right?
>
>  All I think the author is saying is, if I've got a person who is a
> true-blue programmer, a "maker of things", chances are extremely good they
> will have core languages where the sky is the limit, and if they really love
> programming and do it all the time, will ultimately become annoyed at
> "cookie-cutter" environments that lay everything out in pre-fabricated ways.
>  Not because those ways are particularly *bad *but because it isn't the
> nature of a programmer of the type they are searching for.  One who works
> from the ground up in core programming rather than platform development.
>  There is a difference, and it is not small.
>
>  I'm not saying I agree or disagree, but I am saying I can see where he's
> coming from and its not all that strange.
>
>  When we hire systems people, we look for guys that dig Linux/UNIX.  Those
> who have a little network at home and are versed in multiple flavors of the
> beast.  Those who belong to clubs and have friends in the business; who go
> to seminars or installfests because it's fun and this is as much their hobby
> as it is their career.  These guys will ultimately be more valuable,
> informed, happy, and long-lived in the position than someone who isn't of
> this ilk, and only got into UNIX because it can "pay the bills".
>
>  That, unless I'm sorely mistaken, is what he's looking for at his
> company.  It has very little to do with .NET or Microsoft and very much to
> do with the character of the people he's looking for.
>
>
>   #!/jerald
> Linux User #183003
> Ubuntu User #32648
> Public GPG Key:  http://questy.org/js.asc
> Geek Code:  http://questy.org/code
>
>  On Mar 29, 2011, at 2:33 AM, Brian Schenken wrote:
>
>  No wordsmithery could make his silly prejudice reasonable.  He may be
> looking for what you accept is a different breed, but he needs to
> figure out how to articulate it without delving into his own emotional
> bias.  Having written in  .net is not evidence of some sort of
> weakness.
>
> Yeah, there's a tremendous market for worthless certs that has
> polluted IT's and other's talent pools.  The quality of education out
> there has nothing to do with the value of any given technology.
> That's apples and oranges...
>
>
>
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