in reply to A view from the other side...
in thread Phone interview

With so many web designers trying to fake their way into Perl programming positions (~%40 of my phone screens)

As a web designer* trying to transition to Perl programming, I'm curious at what sends warning signals to you.

*(Of course, I consider myself a Perl programmer who writes CGI scripts and knows HTML, but that's still web design :) )

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RE: RE: A view from the other side...
by indigo (Scribe) on Oct 17, 2000 at 00:11 UTC
    You should probably refer to yourself using the non-perjorative web programmer. When I hear web designer, it conjures up images of high school kids and MS FrontPage.

    That distinction is important, because programming ability is the big thing I am looking for. Many web designers will tweak cut and paste code, without ever venturing forth from elementary CGI.pm. Nothing wrong with this, if it gets the job done. Just make sure it doesn't show up on your resume as a Senior Perl Programmer.

    After a year of phone screens and interviews, I have in my arsenal a question that weeds out %90 of the web wannabe's: 
        What is a hash?

    [download]
    Answer that quickly, correctly, and well, and you skip ahead to the Lightning Round.
[reply]
[d/l]
      Glad to hear like it's a pretty clear cut. I won't have any problems there.

      What is a hash?

      Do we get extra points if we occasionally still call them associative arrays?

[reply]
        Thanks to LISP, I still think of em as "dot lists". =)

        --
        $you = new YOU;
        honk() if $you->love(perl)

[reply]

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