Hiring Computer Techs.

[Kurt Granroth]

On Tuesday 16 May 2006 05:41, Jason wrote:
>  >>  I figured (stupid me) "B. Sc. Computer Science, 4.0 gradepoint" would
>  >>  carry
>  >>  more weight. :/
>
> What good is a programmer who can't setup a computer correctly?

Hmm.. I'll have to *completely* disagree with that.  The ability to program a 
computer is entirely disconnected from anything about the physical computer 
itself.  Back in the day, programmers didn't even have access to the 
computers.  They wrote out their programs on punch cards and submitted them 
to be run overnight.  Much more recently, my wife wrote most of her programs 
in college in long-hand on paper and would sit down in front of the computer 
only to type it all in, compile, and run it.  She still has never physically 
configured any computer and doesn't change any default setting on the 
computer... Yet she is a first-rate programmer.

That's somewhat the case even where I work now.  There are a few of us that 
are hyper-aware of how our computers are setup (which OS, how massively 
customized is our OS, what tools are installed, how the tools are configured, 
which desktop.... everything) but there are even more that don't care at all.  
You give them a computer already setup and they use it as-is.  That doesn't 
diminish at all their value as computer programmers.  Honestly, if we cared 
about their ability to setup the computer, they would have been hired as sys 
admins, not programmers.