Re: OT: The Geek defense

On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:43:17 +1300, "Pete Dashwood"
<dashwood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

There MAY be certain personalities who do NOT make good programmers...
people who have limited attention spans, lack self discipline, and are
generally "flighty" , for example. Having trained programmers in various
companies and had a wide cross section of ethnicities, cultures, and
"personalities" to work with, I have arrived at the conclusion stated above.
almost ANYONE of reasonable intelligence and suitably motivated, can learn
to program a computer, particularly in COBOL. Some will argue that knowing
the language doesn't make a programmer, and I would agree. My response to
that would be: given time and practice, programming is a skill that can be
learned. It has always puzzled me why so many (particularly COBOL) people
hesitate to make the leap to a different language, when "programming
ability" is an underlying skill, that really shouldn't be language
dependent...

I've seen the argument that partial autistic people are more likely to
be productive in programming than in, say, sales.

I suspect our stereotypes are often created by leading edge
personalities. In most any field, those on the leading edge get
there by being relatively obsessed with what they are interested in.
This could be the Olympic figure skater, the musician, the Coen
Brothers type movie maker, or the programmer.

But most programming today isn't being done by leading edge people,
obsessed with their computers. It's done by people doing jobs then
going home to their families and other interests. Sort of like
salesmen and bankers and barristas.
.

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