Chicago’s Ruby Developer Crisis

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14 pointsdboyd3 comments

I didn't know there was such a thing as a [language]-programmer.

Picking up a new language has to be nigh trivial for any programmer, right?

Getting to know the frameworks and libraries intricately takes time, but if you're not able to write code in a new language within a day, you're doing something wrong.

And after a few weeks working full time with a certain framework, you should definitely be up to speed.. right?

Exactly, and I think that was kind of the gist of his message; companies can find good developers and spend the time teaching them how to do it.

Besides, a good Ruby developer for one company might still not be using whatever cool tools the new company is asking about. Ruby may be a smaller community than others, but in a room of 10 Ruby developers, I bet you'll find 10 different ways to implement a Rails app (Haml vs. ERb, Steak vs. Cucumber, TestUnit vs. RSpec, and so forth).

Did you actually read the article? retraining other devs to use Ruby was identified as one solution. Nevertheless, bringing new developers in who need training is not a zero-cost process compared to hiring an experienced developer.

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