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bio website linkedin.com/pub/3/4b5/2b1
location United States
age 46
visits member for 3 years, 6 months
seen May 15 '13 at 3:30
erstwhile programmer, chronic boffin poseur

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comment Should we hire someone who writes C in Perl?
@'brian d foy' Notice that "Accepted" is not a synonym for "Correct"; per the pop-up that appeared when I downvoted this "best answer", it can still benefit from criticism. I do think you've been given too much of a pass on how relevant your observations are to this hiring situation. In general, I mostly agree with you on hiring programmers, but the OP was talking about input NOW for hiring NOW. In particular, I think that this answer didn't honor the technical reviewer's instincts, which were clearly that something was amiss. Reframing the question was not a service in this instance.
comment Should we hire someone who writes C in Perl?
This answer is a non sequitur: The OP didn't ask a philosophical question about who can blossom into being a great Perl programmer, the OP was talking about a hiring decision for a current Perl programmer. This code is not the code of someone who is "very good" at Perl. Granted, it does show a basic understanding of Perl's substr function; it does not demonstrate understanding of modularization, data structures or even Perl idiom. For code written "off site" it shows only the bare minimum of producing an answer and thus should be a NO HIRE for someone who claims "real" experience.