[viergroupie]

>What about evidence of design patterns? Does it look like the person who wrote the code doesn't know about things like Observer, Visitor, and Decorator patterns?

This is his criterion for a research position? Understanding of the unsolved problems in a domain? "Irrelevant."

Mathematical sophistication needed to abstractly model complicated-seeming scenarios? "A dime a dozen."

Know the decorator pattern? "omg, you're hired!"