The Shape of Code

How do you find people who are likely to be good software developers?

I use the filter approach: start with whoever is available, filter out those who are not likely candidates and go with those that are left (if any).

The first filter is a question: which language do you like to program in?

This question is positive, in that it assumes the other person is a developer; asking for the name of a language makes it a difficult to dodge question for those who don’t know any language. The language itself is irrelevant, apart from as a lead in to further discussion.

Learning to program is easy and a fun thing to do, at least if you are the kind of person likely to become a good developer. Cheap computing hardware has been available since the 1980s, the extra ingredients are a desire to write software and some degree of the necessary skills.

The next filter is a discussion about the largest software system they have written.

The theme of the discussion is how they solved the problems encountered during the implementation. Do the problems sound like something a developer of the person’s experience ought to find a problem? How much perseverance was shown in solving the problems, were they flexible in trying alternatives, what was their approach to problem solving?

Building systems is all about solving problems. People who cannot solve problems will fail, those with problem solving abilities might succeed.

What about paper qualifications?

Demand for developers continues to outstrip supply, creating an opportunity for turkeys to fly.

When getting a university degree was intellectually challenging, it was a sign of cognitive firepower. The stated aim of the UK government is for 50% of 18-year olds to study for a degree, which means that courses requiring high cognitive firepower are dumbed down (otherwise the failure rate goes through the roof and a University’s ranking suffers). If the only option is a turkey shoot, a degree in a subject requiring lots mathematical thinking (e.g., physics, chemistry, some psychology subjects, …) is obviously a much better filter than Medieval French, Modern History, etc.

There are people whose path through life has kept them away from computers when they were younger and university when they were a bit older. Software carpentry seems to be doing good things for such people; I don’t have any direct experience of working with those who have gone that route, and so cannot say anything about it.

Will this filter approach work for you? Well, it depends on the characteristics required of a good developer in your line of work.

Perhaps you need a regular Joe, who does the job, nine-to-five, and sticks to the tried and trusted approached; a solid person who keeps systems reliably maintained and customers happy.

The independent, frontier, mentality that thrives in ‘new’ fields is becoming a less tolerated in software development. The frontier shrinks as more and more software becomes good-enough and those with money to pay for change, spend it on something else.