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by michaelochurch 5312 days ago
I think it's this: the best programmers generally want to learn new languages and approaches. This means that by mid-career, they've been exposed to at least 5 languages and seriously used two or more. They've at least tried functional programming. Rarely is the general-case favorite, for such a person, C++ or Java.

Finding great programmers who know C++ and Java is not very hard. Finding great programmers who prefer those languages is quite difficult.
2 comments
temphn 5312 days ago
Agree on Java, disagree on C++.

Many outstanding engineers use C++ (or a particular variant thereof) and like it.

C++ is the only choice to write serious performance critical apps with acceptable abstractions. The STL may be hard to debug, but it's the only way to do certain things.

And now with C++11, we're going to see it starting to give many other languages a run for their money.

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microtonal 5312 days ago
I think it's this: the best programmers generally want to learn new languages and approaches.

This is true, however an inherent danger to Haskell/Lisp/ML-filtering is that this group has also a relatively high percentage of people who think every problem is a nail.

So filter for people who know functional languages, but also have plenty of experience with, say, C or C++ projects.

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j_baker 5312 days ago
You really believe functional programmers are more willing to treat their language choice as a golden hammer than C++ or Java programmers? You must have installed a different version of reality than I have.
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microtonal 5312 days ago
I didn't say filtering on Java was any better. Just that 'filter on Haskell or Lisp' is no golden rule. You will miss out on good candidates. There are great programmers out there who never really touched Scheme or Haskell outside a CS course.

Also, I think that a fairly large subset of C++ programmers who think that C++ is an ugly and complex language. But it's often practical, e.g. because it is used in legacy software, because it's fast (and provides more abstraction than C), or because many good cross-platform UI libraries use C++.

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