back to article Job ad seeks 'mediocre' developers

Are you just scraping by coding in Ruby? Are you not prepared to pull infinite all-nighters? Are you less than amazingly fast? If you answered yes to any or all of the above, worry not: Melbourne, Australia, company Flippa has advertised for “Mediocre Ruby Devs”. The ad is not entirely serious, as Flippa does want good …

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  1. Khaptain Silver badge
    Meh

    HHHHmmmmmmmm

    When a company has to tell you how "great" it is to work for them it always carries with it a strong level of doubt. It actually sounds like there are quite a few wankers running the show.

    Great coffee - What a stereotypical piece of crap.

    Great food - See above.

    3 days to work on what you want - Yeah as long as there is nothing more important going on.

    Team week - without precision that could be a week at a coal pit.

    Sound like they might have a highly volatile workforce.

    1. LarsG
      Meh

      Re: HHHHmmmmmmmm

      Maybe it's one of those mum and dad sort of companies? Maybe they actually treat you properly, consider you as a human being and realise that if you are happy in work you will be more productive?

      Or they really are a bunch or cretins?

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

        1. VWDan
          WTF?

          Re: HHHHmmmmmmmm

          Wow, I bet you're fun to have around. I spend 8.5 hours a day at work, meaning I spend far more face to face time with colleagues than I do with my family and my best friends. It makes for a far more pleasant time if people get on and enjoy themselves.

          1. This post has been deleted by its author

          2. Khaptain Silver badge

            Re: HHHHmmmmmmmm

            @VWDan

            The companies that truly are great to work for and have an excellent working environment do not need to advertise or market anything, they simply don't need to. Word of mouth and the grapevine soon let you know who's who in the business environment.

            It's a bit like MacDonalds constantly "reminding" you how good their burgers are compared to the familly run burger joint that do need to say anything..

            Regardless of the analogy, it is difficult to imagine that something is not quite Kosher in any company that needs to express itself in such a manner.

    2. The Indomitable Gall

      Yeah, but....

      Just like they "cast the net widely" then thin down the herd, there's a lot you can only find out about a potential employer when you reach the interview stage. They'll certainly give you a cup of coffee if you ask for it....

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: HHHHmmmmmmmm

      I'd be interested in hearing what you actually think would make a good employer?

      I'm struggling to see how 3 days a month to work on your own stuff (even if it could potentially be denied 90% of the time) is somehow worse than the guaranteed no days at all that most employers give.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

    4. joejack
      Meh

      Re: HHHHmmmmmmmm

      Week-long retreat, and self-congratulatory listing says nothing about the company, other than it has an over-enthusiastic HR department (red flag!)

    5. Steve Taylor 3
      Happy

      Re: HHHHmmmmmmmm

      > Great coffee - What a stereotypical piece of crap.

      But Melbourne *does* have the best coffee in the world. That's what happens when you get a city full of immigrants from Italy, Greece, Lebanon and Turkey. (Plenty of immigrants from other places too, but they didn't help with the coffee.)

      1. Jon B
        Happy

        Re: HHHHmmmmmmmm

        Don't forget all the Kiwis moving there, bringing even better coffee..

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: HHHHmmmmmmmm

          Yes, it's a wonderful NZ city plus more British, in the best sense, than even GB has been for decades. Even working for a mediocre employer there would be better than the "good" ones elsewhere, who in any case tend to be good only while they can more than afford it (I worked for two rather good ones, the old Digital and a very relaxed, small firm in Switzerland, both went bankrupt in the end).

      2. Goat Jam
        Flame

        Re: HHHHmmmmmmmm

        "But Melbourne *does* have the best coffee in the world."

        Surely you mean "most expensive coffee in the world". Who else would willingly pay $5 and up for a cup of coffee other than us dumbshit Australians?

        <- We have the most expensive beer too.

    6. lucaschan

      Re: HHHHmmmmmmmm

      Hi Khaptain,

      I work for Flippa, the company this job ad was for. It seems like you've already made up your mind about us, but I did want to take a moment to address your concern about our coffee facilities.

      Our coffee machine is a Vibiemme Domobar Super and our grinder is a Compak K3 Touch (doserless model). Both these bits of gear get pretty decent reviews if you have time to google around. Our coffee beans are supplied by a local roaster (Seven Seeds). We use their "espresso" blend which is a combination of beans sourced from Guatemala, Brazil & Honduras.

      I'd be happy to address the other concerns you've raised if you're genuinely open to being convinced your impression of us is wrong. :)

  2. jake Silver badge

    What the company is missing ...

    ... is that hiring "Ruby Professionals" is hard because "Ruby" isn't a professional's tool. It's a toy. By way of explanation, the standard implementation of Ruby is written in C ... I, personally, have never seen anything written in Ruby that couldn't have been better coded in C ... maybe with a perl front-end.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: What the company is missing ...

      "never seen anything written in Ruby that couldn't have been better coded in C"

      Never wrote in Ruby. But, either you don't know much about programming languages or the things you see are half-pagers that you get as exercise at uni. Even then, programming these in C would be painful and wasteful. Might even result in a Ruby interpreter.

      1. jake Silver badge

        @Destroy All Monsters (was: Re: What the company is missing ...)

        "Never wrote in Ruby."

        Then why, exactly, are you commenting?

        1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
          Holmes

          Re: @Destroy All Monsters (was: What the company is missing ...)

          > Then why, exactly, are you commenting?

          Because clueless people must be called out.

          1. jake Silver badge

            Re: @Destroy All Monsters (was: What the company is missing ...)

            Calling yourself out? Colo(u)r me confused ...

          2. h4rm0ny

            Re: @Destroy All Monsters (was: What the company is missing ...)

            "Because clueless people must be called out."

            Clueless people must be called out by people who know what they're talking about though, not by people who "never wrote in Ruby".

      2. Ian Michael Gumby
        Devil

        @ Destroyed Monster ...Re: What the company is missing ...

        You haven't written any Ruby and I'm pretty sure you're not very good at C either.

        Look, hands down C happens to be one of those perfect languages. Of course its very easy for a bad C programmer to write some crappy code.

        Ruby and C are totally different paradigms so if you want to blast Jake for his opinion, go for it.

        But to Jake's point. If you've mastered a primitive language like C, then you can spot inefficiencies in Ruby that could be hand coded in C to specific requirements that would perform better.

        That said... you can write something in Ruby much faster than in C that performs adequately.

        1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
          Trollface

          Re: @ Destroyed Monster ...What the company is missing ...

          > You haven't written any Ruby and I'm pretty sure you're not very good at C either.

          Does a LISP interpreter in C written 20 years ago qualify?

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: @ Destroyed Monster ...What the company is missing ...

          C primitive? How much C have you written? Not a lot I daresay (I do mean C, not C++ or similar).

          Perl professional? Yes. I have written moderately complex code for telecoms etc. in it and seen vast swathes by others for such work (wonderful when you have to process vast chunks of text, at speed, for complex patterns and over various feeds. If used properly, it is professional.

          How about Python?

          1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
            Happy

            Re: @ Destroyed Monster ...What the company is missing ...

            "....Perl professional?...." <Sigh> It is probably very indicative of the lack of relevance of the programming language if I was actually preoficient in it a long time ago (in industry terms). Sorry, I used to write stuff in C/C++/Perl, so has to be obsolete!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What the company is missing ...

      Hey jake, ruby is not so bad..

      Hows the ranch? I love the sound of a slackware driven greenhouse..

      Why would you classify ruby as a toy and perl as professional grade?

      I quite like the (ruby) extension api as a way to expose C or C++ libraries to a scripting language (plain C api) as opposed to some of the other scripting language choices..

      Ok it's totally hamstrung by a slow vm, but I must say it's quite nice to knock up little tools and scripts, testing is quite well supported, the community, well the community is the community what can you do?.

      Perl is nippy and very powerful but testing perl is painful, extending perl is initially painful, (perlguts lied to me and I'm still sore).

      There's lots of stuff I wouldn't use ruby for but I don't think it's a toy, so I'm interested in your thoughts, I usually enjoy your posts.

      Sed

      1. jake Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: What the company is missing ...

        "Hey jake, ruby is not so bad.."

        I didn't say Ruby was "bad", I said it was a toy.

        "Why would you classify ruby as a toy and perl as professional grade?"

        Where did I suggest perl was "professional grade"?

        My claim was that I've never seen anything written in Ruby that wouldn't have been better implemented in C, and possibly with a perl front end.

        The Ranch is doing well, thanks for asking. This round's on me :-)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: What the company is missing ...

          Professional grade is my term not yours, I meant a tool fit for a professional to use for a front end, in the example you quote.

          I've written a few applications as.

          1)Front end application implemented as some web interface (ruby/perl are 50/50 % split here)

          2)Interface layer implemented as scripting language extensions in the same language as (1)

          3)Backend end libraries in C & C++

          Quick to develop, easy to enforce constrains in the API layer and access to your favourite scripting language for the glue.

          language choices for 1 & 2 have largely been dictated by the client existing software stack.

          For me I've not really seen much to choose between the current crop of scripting languages, they all more or less do the job within the contraints I've encountered. Then again perhaps we are thinking of different use cases.

          I use ruby as a glue/scripting language, maybe some parsing/pre-processing or tools. But the code is more or less the same code I used to write in C i.e. I still use the self pipe trick and select in ruby ( it doesn't expose the pselect syscall, I can still use pseudo-terminals etc).

          Nowdays, I'd only write in C/C++ to talk to hardware or if the code is something other than the usually (throwaway tools/sysadmin helper/fancy web app) that ruby seems to end up being used for.

          The quality of people producing ruby code varies but I see ruby and C as complementing each other. I agree that given time to craft the work and a skilled worker, C and C++ and a sprinkling of assembler is all one really needs.

          I'm glad I have ruby in my toolbox, I'm intensely grateful that it's not the only tool, I still don't see why it's a toy and not a tool ?

      2. Daniel von Asmuth
        FAIL

        Ruby actually is so bad.

        Exhibit 1. In Ruby, you do not declare a variable. It springs into life upon assignment. A Ruby variable or function parameter has no type; only values have types, so it's like a void pointer in C. Therefore every function must check the types of its arguments at invocation time, but few programs do this.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          FAIL

          Re: Ruby actually is so bad.

          Yes if you want polymorphic variables you should use 'God's own' arrays of unsigned char and void pointers.

          The only real alternative is to use variables which are assumed to be numbers apart from when the variable name starts with one of I, J, K, L, M and N which are integers.

    3. lurker

      Re: What the company is missing ...

      And how long would it take to write that web application in C compared to Ruby?

      Obviously the C app would probably be faster, once written. But in the real world people have deadlines and budget constraints - pretty much nobody writes web applications in C, and this is for a reason.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: What the company is missing ...

        Funny thing is that web application is likely to be I/O bound not CPU bound so you could write the backend in assembler and you still not see a drastic improvement.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: What the company is missing ...

          As an emacs user (when I can, at a pinch vi, why would you use anything less?), so given as these folks are never going to offer me a job here are some of my previous confessions.

          I have developed in both C and various front end tools. Whilst there may well be an initial advantage in reduced development time using some front end tool (AgileTOM *), as projects develop the AgileTOM's lack of flexibility becomes apparent. Thereafter as today's AgileTOM is superseded, by the next flavour of the month development tool, the application or at least the effective support of the application, is now on borrowed time.

          For both of these reason I have then been left thinking indeed we would have been 'better' writing that in C, oh and plus it would have run a lot faster as well.

          (*) Agile Tool Of Month

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Agile Tool of [the] Month

            I've worked with him

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Agile Tool of [the] Month

              Same here with a bit of luck either the quick lime, or saprophytic bacteria will have done their work by now .............................

      2. Vic

        Re: What the company is missing ...

        > And how long would it take to write that web application in C compared to Ruby?

        Have you seen HipHop?

        Vic.

        1. lurker

          Re: What the company is missing ...

          >Have you seen HipHop?

          Yeah, although I've not really used it.

          My main point is that for the large majority of web projects which are not in the facebook/google scale and needing massively optimised code, programmer time efficiency is more relevant than the number of processor cycles a given task eats up. I'm not a ruby guy myself (perl and PHP background) but the whole point of the language as I understand it is the 'on rails' rapid application development methodology which comes with it, so knocking it because it's (obviously) not as optimised as C or C++ seems to me to be an academic argument which misses the point entirely.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What the company is missing ...

      > ...maybe with a perl front-end.

      Is this what the "Report Abuse" button is for?

  3. David Hicks
    Devil

    Sounds like my next gig!

    Kidding... though it probably would tempt me if I was in Melbourne and it was an ad for a C position. Put me in the 'capable but lazy' camp. i love tech, but there's more to life than coding all night for your job.

    Most superstar/ninja/ultimate warrior type programmers aren't actully all that hot anyway. They think they are but they make as many or even more mistakes than anyone else, in a very self-assured way. They do tend to have enthusiasm in droves though, which I guess is a positive. Most of the actually supremely capable devs I've ever met were rather understated about the whole thing, they just get on with it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sounds like my next gig!

      Count me in the lazy camp too. I can code well, I make few mistakes.

      BUT

      I couldn't tell you a single word of programming terminology.

      At university I had more than one lecturer call me the lazy genious because I'd come up with amazing solutions to problems we weren't meant to be able to solve, but I'd completely mess up the simple stuff.. Go figure.

      1. Paul Johnston
        Joke

        Re: Sounds like my next gig!

        Those CS lecturers never could spell!

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sounds like my next gig!

        +1 from me. I can do most things asked of me but I'm f*cked if I can remember even half of the buzzwords and terminology.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sounds like my next gig!

      Yep, it always amazes me how little "superstar" programmers know about infrastructure, in my experience it somehow seems to be less than no knowledge. However a really good infrastructure guy will script, program, DBA a bit, know about hardware and networking as well as all the other stuff like backup software, data storage, different OSes etc.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "...Flippa has advertised for “Mediocre Ruby Devs”."

    Aren't all Ruby devs mediocre?

  5. Trygve Henriksen
    FAIL

    Coffee?

    Guess that rules me out, then...

    *Takes a sip of his pint-sized teacup*

    'Team weeks' probably means huggy-feely exercises, 'team sports'(Usually Paintball), 'characterbuilding exercises'(rafting or mountainclimbing) and other crap.

    I don't like being shot at(And aren't allowed to bring a H&K G3 to shoot back), I understand the dangers of rafting and won't have anything to do with it, mountainclimbing is completely out as I'd probably vomit on the poor bloke below me...

    And I'm afraid that I've become allergic to the huggy-feely stuff as I always break out in sarcasm whenever I encounter it.

    1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Coffee?

      I find the best way to get yourself off HR's list of team-building events is not sarcasm or obstructiveness, it's simply telling the team the answer right at the start of each task. After you've done a few of those days, and read a few books on the subject matter (it's all pretty low-level psycholgy), it's very easy to take a look at the exercise and work out the shortcut that will get your team through the task in the shortest time possible. Most IT guys - especially coders - are problem solvers, and most of the tasks at these teambuilding events have problems that are designed for even the receptionist to solve, so you should be able to break them down in moments. Which spoils it for the HR types as they want you to learn something from it "as a team", and having the IT guy supply a solution in a few seconds really gets their wick as they can't complain. You just have the satisfaction of not having to waste your time on them. Except for the paintballing, which is the best form of legal retribution available to staff!

      1. TheOtherHobbes

        Re: Coffee?

        I'm reminded that a certain famous not entirely acronymic IT company would regularly send groups of minions on week-long team building exercises, then split up the teams as soon as the exercise was over. So they never actually got to work together, ever.

        I'm not sure if the HR genius responsible for that idea is still working there.

        Team building is a nice little earner for the companies that supply team building services - rock climbing, paint balling, samba drumming, art appreciation, that kind of thing.

        But personally when I see the words 'team player' I get an overwhelming urge to spit supersonic red hot rivets at the nearest middle manujment HR drone.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Coffee?

        An old pal of mine worked for a smallish company where their idea of a team week was to fly the whole dev team out to California, hire some Harley Davidsons and tour the Pacific highway. Except I think it was more a team fortnight.

        1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
          Devil

          Re: Re: Coffee?

          "....a team week was to fly the whole dev team out to California...." Yeah, we tried one of those once. We had a Yank who transferred across to our UK operation so ge could "experience the culture of Europe" or something of the like. He organised a team weekend away to Amsterdam. BIG mistake! We were still missing three of the guys, one being the Yank, two days after we crawled back on the Monday, and then Finance threw a fit when someone put bubbly and strippers on the company plastic. The Yank was shifted sideways back to the States soon after.

        2. Vic

          Re: Coffee?

          > hire some Harley Davidsons

          The sadistic bastards.

          Couldn't they have got motorcycles instead?

          Vic.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Coffee?

      Admittedly paintball sounds alarming, but I wouldn't worry about rafting or mountain climbing.

      Australia doesn't have any fast flowing rivers or high mountains.

      In fact if a gentle stroll is too taxing, you can if you wish drive to the summit of our tallest "mountain".

      The car park at the top even has a toilet:

      http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/dunny-at-top-of-australia/story-e6frezt9-1111118117791

      1. Trygve Henriksen
        Unhappy

        Re: Coffee?

        Eh...

        I'm from Norway.

        People get killed here every year when rafting. Mostly these are forreigners trying to navigate some of our rivers 'unassisted' by local guides, but they usually have some experience.

        I have no practical rafting experience and I'm a poor swimmer.

        (I did learn to handle a rowboat before I learned to ride a bicycle, though, and often head out on the ocean with my kayak. But whitewater? No friggin way!)

        Mountains...

        My main exercise is hiking in the mountains, and I visited two mountaintops(at 520 and 600MOH respectively) on sunday, which should explain why I have trouble walking today...

        (Stretching out? why?)

        But actual climbing? No...

        Most mountaintops can be reached without ropes, crampons and what looks like badly made S&M kit...

        My biggest concern about Paintballing is that such an exercise would be that there would a large bunch of people at one time with no clue as to safety procedures, and far too few instructors to handle it correctly.

        Knowing the dorks that organise 'events' at my office, they probably wouldn't even remember to warn people to bring old clothes that it wouldn't matter if gets ruined...

        The same suckers often have wine bottles as prizes on these events.

        Most of these gigs have been 'overnighters'; arrive in morning, shop talk through the day, 'teambuilding' the afternoon/evening, dinner... Crash in hotelbed, late breakfast... even more shop talk through the day, late flight home... (So I and many others pack compact, only a carry-on.) With the prizes handed out at the end of the event, there's no way of getting rid of them properly...

        (Did I mention that I don't drink?)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Coffee?

          (Did I mention that I don't drink?) ->

          That's your problem right there, Being half-drunk actually smooth out the annoyance caused by the "team-building" as well and someone will overdo it, which gives The Team some shared experience to talk about.

          The enjoyment of painball scales exponentially with the amount of alcohol consumed. It really does. On top of that, the unavoidable team-kills and perhaps deliberate "fragging" of those annoying all-in leader-types that always rise to these occasions can be safely excused by the poor eysight and coordination caused by the drink. It is unlikely that any consequences will come later because that would indicate bad judgement by the HR-people - and they sit on the board these days - puttting the event together.

          1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
            Happy

            Re: Re: Coffee?

            "....The enjoyment of painball scales exponentially with the amount of alcohol consumed...." Well, there are other ways to spice it up. Like taking a bet that you can get everyone on your team plus the other PLUS the organisers to shoot your boss without him catching on....

  6. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Happy

    Vim

    I'm alright then.

    (With the cheat sheet next printed out next to me.)

  7. tkioz

    Sounds to me they know they don't need someone extremely qualified or driven, just competent and are letting people know "hey you might not have 20 years experience and degrees coming out your backside, but there are still jobs for you!".

    Nothing wrong with that.

    1. stanimir
      WTF?

      Easier way is listing below par salary... and what the heck the company ain't supposed to grow? and what the heck: there is a high chance to feel the smartest geek there given the conditions.

      Mostly they promote slacking which is a turn off.

      1. Stacy
        WTF?

        @They promote slacking off

        Where? I read the posting and nowhere does it say that.

        It just sounds like they want honest programmers to me. Some of the best programmers I have met, and employed have not been people who class themselves as shit hot. Some of the worst have.

        And I would not take a developer who wanted the job just because of the salary - in my experience they are without fail the last people you should want to employ! Sure it's a factor, but I'd take a lower paid (but still suiting my lifestyle), better atmosphere job over a higher paid crap environment job anytime.

  8. mark 63 Silver badge

    its just the aussie turn of phrase. I bought an energy dring there and the warning on the label was "Dont go nuts and drink heaps in a day, and dont give it to any pregnant chicks"

    I'd be interested to know what they are paying because stuff there costs a fortune, and wages are high to reflect that.

    These are all relative values and at the whim of the markets but the exchange rate seems way out.

    If you got a job in the UK , paid in pounds , and telecommuted from Australia you'd have to be on £30k minimum.

  9. thomas k.

    brogrammer?

    I tried both wikipedia and dictionary.com and neither produced any results.

    Is it similar to brony, i.e. - an adult male programmer who's a fan of My Little Pony?

    1. stanimir

      Re: brogrammer?

      "wikipedia and dictionary.com" - they noobs -> Urban dictionary:

      http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brogrammer

      1. Richard 81

        Re: brogrammer?

        Surely a Google search would have done. Rule of thumb: if the meaning of a word can't be found on the first 2 pages of a Google search, then it doesn't exist (on the internet).

        On topic: Brogrammmers sound like nobs.

  10. Crisp
    Pint

    Mediocre Programmers

    If producing robust quality code on time that fits the requirements and passes testing makes me a mediocre programmer. Then I'm proud to be mediocre.

    1. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
      Pint

      Re: Mediocre Programmers

      Didn't RBS try that with the plebs it wanted to manage CA7 and look where that got them

      Or was it cheap programmers? does it matter? is there a difference?

  11. Richard 81

    I don't know...

    That sort of ad appeals to me. I love programming and solving algorithmic problems, but I have no wish to end up in a grey cubicle.

    1. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
      Childcatcher

      Re: I don't know...

      Oh how I wish I had a grey cubicle, too many people can see your browsing habits in an open plan office....

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's always nice

    ... when a company advertises themselves as clever-clever dickheads. Saves me having to waste time on an application.

  13. OzBob
    Thumb Up

    Never answer a job ad with "guru" or "expert" in it,..

    it usually indicates a poor management strategy for personnel or lack of money for official support agreements with vendors. You will more than likely end up holding up an unskilled or untrained team, or trying to bodge systems you don't own the code to.

    "mediocre" sounds about right for middle of the road job. Not too sure about there not being a quiet working environment tho.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Never answer a job ad with "guru" or "expert" in it,..

      It's a warning sign for me too. The other side of the coin is they seem to be aiming for some over confident gimp, who will probably turn out to be an arrogant tart, so it's quite likely the rest of the team are that way too. Sure there won't be plenty of infighting in that department. Honest.

      If I see a job advert advertising for a ninja, I run a million miles.

      1. Sandtitz Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: Never answer a job ad with "guru" or "expert" in it,..

        What about Sumo coders then?

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    "no Emacs"

    That means they are pissed of by people who actually know what they do. Emacs usage indeed correlates with highly experienced Unix C or C++ developers.

    What they apparently want are self-trained 22-year olds who don't have a clue, so as not to embarass the 25-year old idiots who do the "management".

    I am a vi user, but I know Emacs is indeed a powerful tool to those who are real IT professionals, as opposed to the script kiddies.

    1. peyton?
      Devil

      Re: "no Emacs"

      What it tells me is that they don't even want ruby developers. They want RubyMine developers (but hey - I bet some ruby experience wouldn't hurt!). Preferably RubyMine running on a sleek Macbook Air. And with a latte at hand.

      While I am tired of postings for "ninja" devs, I was immediately turned off by this place. Wtf does my preferred editor have to do with my programing skills?

  15. Christian Berger

    Hmm....

    If you look for mediocre people, you might get the people who think they are mediocre... which usually are the better ones. (see Kruger Dunning Effect)

    Other than that, it's usually not a good idea to start at a company where you are one of the more competent employees. It gives you little space to grow, and you need to tollerate a lot of decisions made by people who know even less than you do, but think they know more.

    1. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
      Joke

      Re: Hmm....

      Or you could look up the Dunning–Kruger effect, it's about the inability of the unskilled to recognise their own mistakes

      1. Francis Boyle Silver badge

        Dunning Kruger has nothing to do with skill

        Well very little. It's the tendency of the less competent to overate their abilities (or conversely the more competent to underrate them) but competency isn't the same thing as skill. A lack of skill can frequently be remedied by training and practice, incompetence almost never.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    managed to avoid those crap editors for 20+ years

    I've programmed almost nothing else but C and then later C++ since 1986 and managed to do that without ever having to use those utterly awful editors.

    EDT (and later Eve/TPU with Edt emulation) were vastly more powerful editors and at the same time vastly more user friendly. Shame the nix os's never had anything close.

    The only editors I ever had to use that were as bad as VI was on a 1960 era, 16bit Mini using a teletype console to write Fortran on.

    1. Spanners Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: managed to avoid those crap editors for 20+ years

      using a teletype console to write Fortran on.

      You just gave me a flash back to college in 1979 where I used such a terminal to learn BASIC on. I still have a listing of my first programme.

      Ahhh nostalgia...

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    no emacs users?

    Ctrl-x Ctrl-k to you, you old buffer.

    1. Thorsten

      Re: no emacs users?

      C-x C-k? What's that? kmacro-edit-macro???

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: no emacs users?

        Emacs 'kill buffer' command I think ......

      2. disgruntled yank

        Re: no emacs users?

        Oops, you're right: C-x, k.

        "Knowledge is in the fingers' --- Thoreau.

  18. Doug Glass
    Go

    Oh the idealism ...

    ... of youth and inexperience.

  19. Kubla Cant
    Thumb Down

    In my experience mediocre developers aren't just good developers with a more relaxed attitude and a slower working pace. They're developers who hope to get through to the end of the day without thinking very hard about what they're doing. So what you get isn't reasonable code in a longer time-frame without cutting-edge features, it's bad, lazy code that somebody else has to re-work.

    If it makes any difference, I'm not actually an emacs user.

  20. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
    Boffin

    Mediocre Developers

    The advantage mediocre developers have over the whizz-kids is that they know they are not whizz-kids and therefore tend to be more cautious and methodical in what they do. Give me a team of them any day.

    As Thomas Edison said; "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration".

    The icon is meant to be sarcastic.

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