[Haskell-cafe] Are you a Haskell expert? [How easy is it to hire Haskell programmers]

[Mark Lentczner]

I suppose that what qualifies as a good Haskell candidate depends on what you are looking for in a software engineer in general. For my part, having hired engineers into various groups over the last 20+ years, I've always preferred to hire people who demonstrate a broad understanding of computing rather than a deep knowledge of the particular domain at hand. So, for  example, when hiring into a C++ shop, I expect a medium level applicant to know templates, STL, iostreams, boost, etc..., but I don't expect them to be able to rattle them off off the top of their head. What I want is for them to be able to know what tools are available, when they should consider using them, and where to go get the details if they need them. An expert C++ programmer, who can rattle off complicated template structures is not that useful to me if they don't have a broader sense of what libraries are out there, or where to look, or even when to use Python (or Haskell) instead!

On Jul 3, 2010, at 11:29 AM, Yves Parès wrote:
> Back to initial topic, I have a sudden fear: do you have to master Template Haskell so as to be regarded as a guru :-{ ?
> Let it be no, please, let it be no...
Well, perhaps one doesn't really want that kind of guru! I've used Template Haskell, I've written a Quasi-Quoter, but I've by no means mastered it.  I've got 77 packages installed in --user above and beyond Haskell Platform and while I've not mastered all of them, what I know is what is there, and where to look when needed. I've by no means mastered the various GHC extensions, but I've written code with dependent types and know where to find the papers if I need a deeper understanding. So, I think of myself as a general programming guru - one who knows a pretty broad swath of computer science, and w.r.t. to many programing languages one who knows enough about the language and libraries to be able to find what I need to write excellent code. I suppose for Haskell I'd call myself guru-in-training. Those are the kinds of gurus (or gurus-in-training) that I've always looked to hire.

	- Mark

Mark Lentczner
http://www.ozonehouse.com/mark/
IRC: mtnviewmark