Re: Growing your own programmers

Howard,

In a message dated 6/18/99 1:37:23 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
hweatherly@dlis.dla.mil writes:

> Allow me to add my 2 bits here, I have read this thread and in spite of
>  Deans rather gloomy message, I would point out that most (programmers) were
>  non technical before becoming programmers; I do agree that the devil is in
>  the details though. If your intended candidates exhibit an affinity for
>  details and like puzzles, chances are good that they can think abstractly
>  (out of the box in current vernacular). From my perspective  there is
>  enough discipline involved for programming to be considered a science as
>  well as being an art, so go for it, but get someone in as an anchor,
>  someone with extensive experience that can help the folks in the
>  transition.

Hey, I resemble that remark ;-)!  I did not intend for my message to be 
gloomy, just practical.  Even five percent is _A WHOLE LOT_ of people!  If 
you can look around your shop and not see people that are making a living at 
programming that shouldn't be, you are either:

A)  Working alone.
B)  Well managed.
or
C)  The one that needs to be finding a new line of work ;-).

I was (albeit ineptly) trying to point out that there are a lot of people 
programming that shouldn't be, and a lot of people driving forklifts that 
should be programming.  Your puzzle analogy is _PERFECT_!  The bonus is, 
_our_ puzzles actually _do_ something once they're solved -- hopefully making 
a user's life easier...

Regards!

Dean Asmussen
Enterprise Systems Consulting, Inc.
Fuquay-Varina, NC  USA
E-mail:  DAsmussen@aol.com

"There is one difference between a tax collector and a taxidermist -- the 
taxidermist leaves the hide." -- Mortimer Caplin
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