🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec15.195018.5227@afs.com> greg@afs.com (Gregory H. Anderson)  
writes:
> In article <Bz6wo3.Jz6@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> lemson@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (David  
> Lemson) writes:
> > 
> > You wouldn't believe how many headhunters call me in search of
> > NeXTSTEP programmers. 
> 
> Well, the joke's on them and anyone else who thinks experience is a  
> pre-requisite for all employees hired. AFS has 9 programmers now, only two  
> of whom (recent arrivals) had ANY NeXT experience at all. Dave and I  
> taught ourselves NeXTSTEP programming in less than three months (and I had  
> only programmed in ... BASIC ... before), although I'll admit it takes  
> almost a year to get really fluent at it. Since then, we have taught  
> everybody else in amazingly short periods of time.
> 
> My point is that you only need one or two people who really, really know  
> NeXTSTEP to build a programming shop, corporate-internal or third-party.  
> Everyone else just has to be reasonably smart and open-minded. As I've  
> stated innumerable times, the difficulties learning NeXTSTEP relate to  
> information volume, not concepts. The AppKit, DBKit, IndexingKit, etc.,  
> are just plain BIG, not hard. If you have even one or two person around  
> who know how to navigate them, you can keep a whole shop moving forward.  
> We do it. So can you.
> 
> *soap box on*
> Why won't anyone invest in training their employees anymore? Why must  
> everyone come pre-programmed for the specific job available? I'd rather  
> teach programming to smart liberal arts majors who know how to think, than  
> teach thinking to a bunch of computer linguists who only know how to code.
> *soap box off*
> 
> Thank you. I feel better now.
> 

I'll second Greg's comments. Only about half of our engineering staff had  
NeXTSTEP programming experience before coming to work at Pages; the rest  
learned on the job (most went to DevCamp, but one didn't even bother with that  
and is doing a great job). It's critical--or, at least, extremely helpful--to  
have a few NS gurus around (for example, Bruce "the Spud" Henderson), but after  
that, it's more important to hire the right people than to seek after  
particular coding experience. Of course, if you can get a great person with the  
right coding background, all the better.... :-)    ..bruce..

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Bruce F. Webster             | No! I am not Bill Gates, nor would I want to be;
Chief Technical Officer      | I'd rather parse the fish than own the knife;
Pages Software Inc           | (Imagine! Having moby bux but chained
bwebster@pages.com           | to forty million lusers, what a life...)
#import <pages/disclaimer.h> |     -- Jeff Duntemann
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