NYCPHP Meetup

[Peter Sawczynec]

I have listened to/seen/read about many famous artistic movie directors,
photographers, professional athletes, chefs, musicians, even painters
speaking about their projects/achievements. To the one they are
extremely and profoundly well educated (however they achieved it) in all
and I mean all of the technical aspects and even the most subtle
minutiae that are the bedrock knowledge of their chosen profession.
Also, as far as I know whatever your chosen career you are going to face
a very rigorous testing of your full skill set to get to the top or
acquire the best jobs/projects before you are unleashed unchecked into
your industry. 

For example, you may hear a painter say "Well, I really don't know how I
do that. I get inspiration from anywhere around me and then it just
bursts forth". But you will also uncover that they can make their own
paint from eggs and dirt, they know and understand the concept and
content of every major art technique and why and when they use it, and
on and on and on. 

Whether totally self-taught, immaculate savant or academic thoroughbred
-- it always pays to become an knee deep expert in something before you
become a journeyman and then hands on expert.  

I see no issue with using any kind of testing to suss out
(unfortunately) the outright liars, frauds and lazy two-faced scabs that
might think a little creative deception that is closely followed by a
little creative stealing is just quite alright in their life and
transposes easily into your office.

And I would still maintain all theory aside, that a test that tests for
what your office uses and does will net you better more appropriate
people be better than a generic Q&A. 

Peter
  

 





-----Original Message-----
From: talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org [mailto:talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org]
On Behalf Of tedd
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 10:21 AM
To: NYPHP Talk
Subject: Re: [nycphp-talk] webmaster test (update)

>tedd wrote:
>>No, I had not read that -- but the article drives home the point I 
>>was making in that it's very difficult to test a person's ability 
>>to program.
>
>And it is definitely language specific. Tackling a problem in PHP 
>may be way easier than using Assembler.

True, and assembler is easier than machine -- which I've done.

But after all is said and done the key is being able to vision things 
in a certain way that is not typical for the majority of people.

>That is probably true for the pure logic, but I tried pretty much 
>any programming environment I could get my hands on and I failed in 
>all but two. One was the now defunct VB6 and the other one is PHP. I 
>tried Java and C/C++ and they are just way too complicated.

All complications can be resolve in time. If you work with it long 
enough, you'll see the commonality between all languages.


>>Some of the top programmers I ever met, had no formal education. 
>>Explain that.
>
>The top programmers understand the business and therefore know the 
>expectations. -snip-


Now you're talking about the definition of a "top programmer" and on 
that, we could discus for ages.  :-)

>That written, I really should get back to work....

Same here -- nice discussion.

Cheers,

tedd
-- 
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