Python's website does a great disservice to the language

[Alex Martelli]

Rocco Moretti <roccomoretti at hotpop.com> wrote:

> Alex Martelli wrote:
> > The Eternal Squire <eternalsquire at comcast.net> wrote:
> >    ...
> > 
> >>2)  Consider what he really wants for a supervisor of software
> >>engineers.   Ideally such a person should be a software engineer with
> >>at least 3 times the experience of the most junior member.  Such a
> > 
> > 
> > I like the general idea but not your formula.  If the most junior team
> > member was 1 month out of school, would it really be OK for the
> > supervisor to be somebody who graduated 3 months ago?-)
> 
> FWIW, when I read it, I took "experience" as a semi-qualitative measure,
> more than just "time since graduation."
> 
> Hence someone out of school only three months could have more 
> "experience", than someone who has worked for ten years, if the recent
> grad has been heavily involved in pre-graduation projects (e.g. open 
> source), or if the ten-year veteran has done nothing constructive with
> his time, besides raking in a paycheck.

Sure -- measure "experience" in whatever units you like, e.g., number of
function points designed, coded, tested and debugged in one's lifetime;
my (meant-to-be-funny but not unfounded...;-) quip still stands -- the
concept that the cat herder (==supervisor of developers) should ideally
be (among other things) a very experienced developer is (IMHO) quite
sound, but it's also quite inappropriate to gauge that in terms of a
ratio with the most junior team-member's experience (which might be very
low, in whatever units of measure one might like to use).


Alex