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I disagree with this in so many ways; nearly all the excellent coders/hackers I know are heavily biased towards certain languages and frameworks. They have pet projects, are idealistic and often fussy about what they work with.

To hire a great hacker you need to have a problem they WANT to work on: something that hits right in their area of interest. And then you need to give them the freedom to do it in whatever way they want (cause they know best).

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I think that when you try lots of things and thinking critically about them as you work with them, you're bound to form strong opinions about what you like and what you don't like. That's why being able to intelligently discuss your favorite language/framework/whatever is much more important that what that pet technology is.

We're kind of arguing the same point - I mostly meant there should be less of a focus on language experience and more of a focus on passion (pet projects). It goes without saying if you try to hire someone who doesn't want to work for you or your projects, it's not going to work.

I really like C#, and I prefer to do most of my projects with it, but learning new languages interests me (a problem I want to work on) and is a challenge that I'm passionate enough about to do in my spare time.

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