Re: Where are future senior programmers coming from?

I've been very lucky, and my company supports new programmers. We're a very small company, and the need for Perl arose, I was the only person who had any exposure at all, and that wasn't much. I was going to "fill the gap" until we could find more experienced Perl people. Guess what - we couldn't find any!

I learned from every source I could find, including the kind Monks here, from books and web sources. The one thing I couldn't find was a class. I'm located in Connecticut and the only local class I could find was cancelled three times because I was the only person who registered.

My company believes in education and is more than willing to pay for classes, and encourages team participation. It has been almost a year, and we now have a team with one of the best Perl Programmers I have ever had the pleasure of working with. And the best part is that he is willing to share his knowledge, explain what he does and how and why he does it. I am still the nubee, but I'm improving. With his mentoring, I've learned a tremendous amount!

If more companies were willing to take the combined approach of education and teams, I believe we would have more enthusiastic, good Perl Progrmmers.

Comment on Re: Where are future senior programmers coming from?

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Re^2: Where are future senior programmers coming from? by tilly (Archbishop) on Sep 07, 2006 at 18:30 UTC
I'm glad you're improving. However your "best Perl Programmer" comment reminds me of a story. A woman I know recently moved from a large city to a much smaller one. She has a job, and her boss complimented her by telling her that she was the best programmer she had seen. She was depressed about this because she realized that he was probably right, and thought this was sad. You see, she doesn't think of herself as a good programmer because there are so many others she knows that she thinks are better. But she admits that she's probably the best that he's seen. So the moral is that while you should try to learn from this person because he is the best you know, don't treat what he says as gospel. There are a lot of people out there who are a lot better than he is, and if you want to continue improving, you're going to have to figure out a way of learning from them. (Random suggestion: have you considered doing a non-local class? From Connecticut you can commute to Boston or New York, both of which have plenty of classes to sign up for.) (Random note: my wife interviewed for residencies not long ago, and Yale liked her quite a bit. I already didn't like the idea of living back east, but what clinched it was that I looked at the local job market and saw fairly poor pickings. After discussion we ranked Yale fairly low and didn't wind up going there.)	[reply]

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Re^2: Where are future senior programmers coming from?
by tilly (Archbishop) on Sep 07, 2006 at 18:30 UTC

A woman I know recently moved from a large city to a much smaller one. She has a job, and her boss complimented her by telling her that she was the best programmer she had seen. She was depressed about this because she realized that he was probably right, and thought this was sad. You see, she doesn't think of herself as a good programmer because there are so many others she knows that she thinks are better. But she admits that she's probably the best that he's seen.

So the moral is that while you should try to learn from this person because he is the best you know, don't treat what he says as gospel. There are a lot of people out there who are a lot better than he is, and if you want to continue improving, you're going to have to figure out a way of learning from them.

(Random suggestion: have you considered doing a non-local class? From Connecticut you can commute to Boston or New York, both of which have plenty of classes to sign up for.)

(Random note: my wife interviewed for residencies not long ago, and Yale liked her quite a bit. I already didn't like the idea of living back east, but what clinched it was that I looked at the local job market and saw fairly poor pickings. After discussion we ranked Yale fairly low and didn't wind up going there.)

[reply]