RE: Programmers with network engineering skills

["Brandt, Ralph" <ralph.brandt () pateam com>]

I would hope that the working with the team aspect would have been have been handled BEFORE you spend time on this.  
Let HR do it, then check if they did it right because they screw it up at times. I have been overridden twice in hiring 
decisions over the years by my boss.  Both of them lived to regret that action.  Both were unsuitable because the 
person had character and personality flaws that made them unsuitable for any job except working more than 20 miles from 
Ted Kaminski.  




Ralph Brandt
Communications Engineer
HP Enterprise Services
Telephone +1 717.506.0802
FAX +1 717.506.4358
Email Ralph.Brandt () pateam com
5095 Ritter Rd
Mechanicsburg PA 17055


-----Original Message-----
From: Jeroen van Aart [mailto:jeroen () mompl net] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 4:05 PM
To: NANOG list
Subject: Re: Programmers with network engineering skills

John Mitchell wrote:
> <rant>
>
> I would wholeheartedly agree with this, but I believe its worse than 

> teaching process is one of learning to program like a monkey, monkey 
> see monkey do. People are no longer taught to think for themselves, but 
> instead taught to program in a specific language (PHP, Java, rarely C 
> or C++ any more, C#, or VB) and that is all they know. I don't believe 
> this is a failing with the lecturers but with the fundamental change in 
> attitudes to programming.

The story of Mel comes to mind (one of my favourite):

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/R/Real-Programmer.html

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck ) since this gives people a 
> chance to show they can program rather than being able to tell me "I 
> know PHP" or "I know C", suprisingly very few newer programmers can 

I think someone being able to quickly understand brainfuck and write 
usable code in it may be smart, but I don't think it's necessarily a 
sure sign of a potentially productive employee that "fits well in the team".

Greetings,
Jeroen

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