[JacobHarrington]

Fascinating read, and it touches upon a problem that seems to exist in every programming organization: you can't say why, but you just know who the best developers are. Sure, that statement is somewhat trivial when experience and ability vary wildly, but when the skill levels begin to converge there is a lot more self-organization among the developers such that they somewhat rank themselves.

To me the problem comes when looking for new developers to add to the organization. In the thirst to determine what a "good" developer is we've instead settled on choosing those who seem to have studied the hardest while learning how to program. The fact that this knowledge is rarely directly applied in most tech orgs (how many basic CRUD apps are hurt by poor algorithm choices, after all?), but is still the only thing approaching a reliable barometer of basic competence is a pain point for any programmer hunting for a job.

Programming is a creative endeavor in many ways, which means subjectivity is involved in the selection of "best" and "worst". Figuring out how to codify that into an objective ranking is something that, when solved, will take the computing job market by storm. Or then again, that could just be wishful thinking on my part.