Beginners and experts (Batchelder blog post)

Larry Hudson orgnut at yahoo.com
Wed Sep 27 21:18:10 EDT 2017


On 09/27/2017 09:41 AM, leam hall wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 23, 2017 at 5:26 PM, Ned Batchelder <ned at nedbatchelder.com>
> wrote:
[snip]
> 
> The question is, what should a person "know" when hiring out as a
> programmer? What is 'know" and what should be "known"? Specifically with
> Python.
> 

Hopefully NOT like this person...
(Source:  http://rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_misc.shtml
There is no direct link to this item, it's about 2/3 the way down in a long web page...)

<quote>
Since I teach nights at a local community college, I get a lot of professional programmers in my 
classes upgrading their education. One student, who was one such person, attended every lecture 
and smiled and nodded and took notes. But he only turned in his first assignment. The results of 
his first test were horrid. Out of curiosity, I asked my wife, who barely knew how to turn a 
computer on much less program one, to take the test (which was mostly true/false and multiple 
choice questions). My wife scored higher than this guy.

The semester's end came, and he flubbed his final, too. A few weeks later, I got a call from him 
complaining about his 'F'. I pointed out he hadn't turned in any of his assignments, and those 
counted 75% of the grade.

"Did you hear me say something besides what the other students heard?" I asked.

"Well, I thought my test grades would carry me," he replied.

It had turned out his company had paid for him to take the course. Since he failed, it suddenly 
came to the attention of his employer that he didn't know how to program, and now his job was in 
jeopardy. As I hung up the phone, I mused that his company shouldn't fire him. It was a perfect 
match: a programmer who couldn't program and a company that couldn't figure out sooner that he 
couldn't.
</quote>

-- 
      -=- Larry -=-



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