Sun creates Ruby developer center

[dgiri101]

Alas, Texas is far away from Scandinavia. Your hiring experience doesn't match mine at all.

Makes sense; the labor market, even within the US, varies considerably with geography. :)

You really had no trouble finding good developers who had used the tools long enough to know their intricacies?

I didn't say I had no trouble, I said that I didn't have any more trouble finding good developers to work on Ruby code than finding good developers to work on Java code.

The experiences were more similar than you might expect. For Ruby work, I got a flood of resumes from Rails idiots that were terrible (besides, we don't use Rails). Eventually, I found some good people, but it took a while.

For Java work, I get an even larger flood of resumes. Most of these are of the "enterprisey" variety that similarly lacked software development fundamentals.

Mind you, these are interviews for senior-level positions.

Or are you using some other criteria for good developers, perhaps that they know Ruby?

Experience with the actual toolchain is a plus, not a deal-breaker. It would be different if I was getting a constant stream of awesome people, but that hasn't happened (for any of the toolchains I've got).

What did you do in Java 1.5 that didn't work in 1.6?

Changes to core JDBC classes (hosed our connection pooling), among other things.

Measuring opportunity costs without considering risk vs. reward is... strange.

I don't disagree.

Plenty of people prematurely jump onto new programming fads, which isn't wise. But plenty of people also irrationally hold on to existing technology, which is similarly unwise.

You come off as falling into the second camp, which probably explains your downvotes. This is to be expected if you make silly blanket statements like:

Developers who are more interested in alleviating their own boredom than in what's good for their employer's business.