| cfedde | http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html |
| dmpk2k | I think it's less discipline, and just plain experience. |
| rmah | anyone who doesn't agree with me on the lack of skilled developers out there has little experience hiring them |
| dmpk2k | Where they get that experience is another matter, which comes back to motivation. :p |
| Teal_Stallion | dmpk2k, i whole heartedly disagree |
| cfedde | dmpk2k: one year of learning and 15 of doing it over and over again. |
| rmah | dmpk2k: many "experienced" developers are horrible |
| Teal_Stallion | discipline is key, it takes alot of it to sit down and learn a language |
| rmah | though, even the best get better with experience Teal_Stallion: learning a language is trivial for good programmers |
| cfedde | the best know that getting better is a survival skill |
| rmah | and not much of a challenge for decent ones |
| cfedde | mastering a language is not trivial. |
| rmah | if learning the syntax of a programming language is *hard* for someone, they shouldn't be programming. IMO. |
| Teal_Stallion | but to make yourself sit down and do it, is where the discipline comes in hand |
| cfedde | unfortunately too many people think that it is. |
| rmah | cfedde: I don't look for masters, though I do hope for them. I'm disapointed just looking for people who can write a decent class |
| cfedde | a good fortran programmer can write fortran in any language. |
| rmah | heh, that old saw still gets a chuckle out of me cfedde++ |
| cfedde | rmah: ever hire a java trained programmer to write scheme? |
| Teal_Stallion | and rmah |
| rmah | cfedde: I, thankfully, haven't been infected by the MIT/scheme disease ;-) |
| Teal_Stallion | i agree, syntax is by no means hard |
| forsaken | is there a way to have a perl script test a login on the local system? I'm trying to write a web-based app that requires people to login to access local files on the server that they own (their home directory) |
| cfedde | rmah: people that don't know lisp well suffer from thinking that all programming languages are the same. |
| Teal_Stallion | i think semantics is the more challenging attribute to learning any language |
| cfedde | lisp programers know that it's true |
| rmah | Teal_Stallion: all the mainline languages are, more or less, the same. sure some may include a bit of the functional stuff, and others a bit of the this or that |
| thrig | http://www.xkcd.com/c224.html |
| rmah | but the basic concepts are very similar |
| rhizo | forsaken: look into the authentication mechanism used on the system - and search CPAN for relevant modules before setting out to reinvent wheels |
| rmah | Teal_Stallion: honestly though, I don't ask for much when looking for perl developers |
| forsaken | rhizo, it's a linux system in a college campus, i don't know how to find the auth mechanism..i assume your standard linux login |
| Teal_Stallion | i wonder how much perl developers make starting out |
| rmah | if they can use "complex" data structures (i.e. lists of hashrefs) and know the diff between my and our and understand packages and methods, I'm happy |
| rhizo | acid_burn: as an autodidact, from personal experience learning comp. sci., i suggest you get some C under your belt first, and definitely spend some time in a decent shell: get to know some built-ins and some of the common tools; Perl will make much more sense then, and you will come to appreciate it |