[Purdue-pm] Picking a programmer

[Rick Westerman]

----- Original Message -----
> I think it's important that the person can communicate well. They need
> to be able to work with other people to understand the content of the
> programming task, the motivation, the impact, the users, etc. They
> also
> need to be able to document their code, if you want a really high
> quality product.

Communications would be my #1 criteria.   Without the ability to communicate then you won't get good internal code comments nor external documentation.  The daily status reports will basically be a grunt.  The programmer will not listen to nor clarify customer comments, complaints and suggestions.  All of those behaviors can be enforced however you won't get *good* results unless the programmer can actually communicate.




> 
> 
> 
> On 8/21/14, 11:11 AM, derrick wrote:
> > I'll throw out the ideas of:
> >
> > 1. problem solving
> > 2. curiosity
> > 3. creativity
> >
> > I'm interested in curiosity and creativity because requirements for
> > projects are rarely well defined with first given. There ends up
> > being
> > a few revisions/clarifications as each side interprets them. Being
> > able to figure out what people really want and tease out the use
> > cases
> > seems to be more of an art than a science.
> >
> > Understanding multiple programming paradigms (functional,
> > procedural,
> > object oriented, vector) is more interesting to me than knowing
> > multiple languages. I feel that language is a lot about knowing the
> > correct syntax, a little about understanding peculiarities between
> > languages. Knowing how to think through a problem using a paradigm
> > allows you to approach a problem from many angles, weighing the
> > benefits of each.
> >
> > dsk
> >
> >
> > On 08/20/2014 11:29 AM, Ken mcNamara wrote:
> >> If you needed to hire a programmer for an important project...
> >>
> >> What do you look for?
> >>
> >> Multiple languages?
> >>
> >> System agnostic?
> >>
> >> Prefers programming to eating/sleeping?
> >>
> >>
> >> What qualities make a good programmer?
> >>
> >> Any thoughts would be appreciated.
> >>
> >> KenMc
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> >>
> >
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> 
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-- 
Rick Westerman 
westerman at purdue.edu

Bioinformatics specialist at the Genomics Facility.
Phone: (765) 494-0505           FAX: (765) 496-7255
Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture
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