The search for the perfect developer

In South Africa it seems the developer or at least a good developer is becoming harder and harder to find. No matter where you go or what you do getting a good developer is becoming so elusive that it almost like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack.

The fundamental reason behind this is that most people tend to follow the trend that they build there experience and then move on in short bursts.This is a never ending cycle until said individual actually stops working for a company and either starts their own company or just works as a contractor.

This presents 2 huge problems , company’s have a hard time holding on to developers and developers tend to become undependable.The first problem is usually faced by the smaller company’s who are just starting up , they find and recognize good talent but cant hold onto the person due to financial constraints. With the financial crisis the world has been going through this has become even harder for the smaller company’s that manage to even keep afloat.

The second problem is that the developer never works on one system for a long period of time or till release and doesn’t put the same effort into a system as a person that is in a project for the long term.The thinking being that not only why should i put in time and effort into a system that i am not going to maintain or even use but if there are problems i can always move on and get a better job .But on the flip side there are some cases where because of the financial crisis people have to move on not always because they dont like their current company but because they have to , just to keep themselves afloat.

I personally think that some of the smaller companies are to blame , by constantly hunting for better developers instead of training the ones that they already employ to me better people and by sticking to older technologies they are really hurting their business rather than helping it. From a personal perspective , there is nothing that developers hate more than having to use ancient technologies and by forcing them to use said technologies you end up pushing them away.

Now while this may not be the case with every developer i have seen it happening to frequently to believe its not an isolated incident. So while you may never find the perfect developer in this world as an employer what compromise’s do you make when you hire a new person. I know many people use probation as a safety net in case things go south while other people put candidates through stringent tests. While all of these do help to filter out the weeds , in the end i think the perfect developer is one that has been brought up and nurtured in the environment they want to work in.

As a employer or employee what are your thoughts ?

~stalkerh

Coding without understanding is not coding

What it is ,is best described as a glorified typist. Now while i know many people will disagree with this saying that you need to know what code to copy and where to copy the code to so that it can work. I now point you to a very interesting site 1000000 Monkeys , the basic idea is that if a million monkeys keep on typing some thing good will be born from it.

I am now seeing a very similar phenomenon in the coding industry , where we have a ton of monkeys churning out just as many tons of code but only very little being useful to the rest of the world. It is then the job of the more enlighten and ambitious coders to step in and fix the huge mess that has been left behind.

Now to fix this is a task that i think no one person can solve , it has to be the responsibility of every instructor and mentor out there to teach the students to work on there own and not just cling on to the more experienced to do all the work. After all if no one bothers to learn then what will happen to the new generation when the older generation disappears , the end of the world .

If you are one of those copy and paste / Ask senior programmer types then do the following every time you hit a dead end. Google the problem ( if you don’t know how to do that , have a look at Steven’s awesome guide ) , after googling the problem and getting a answer don’t use it blindly , try to under stand it to the best of your capability’s so that when you use the solution you know if there might be any other problems or side effects.

Also it doesn’t hurt to do a bit of research sometimes and by research i mean picking up a book or asking people , you will be surprised how much you can learn like that.

Remember the more coder’s the better the more monkeys the worse :) , now keep well and keep coding.

~stalkerh