Found this on some forum. Forgot the link so my apologies to whoever should be credited for this...
Being an ace coder and/or coding-standards wizard, or an omniscient god of language constructs, OOP techniques and template meta-programming doesn't amount to a hill of beans if you are handed a real-world problem that requires some creativity and thought outside of making a CPU sing. If you are looking to hire someone to write a book on the language of choice then by all means, hire the geek. But our experience over the years has been that the interviewees with the problem solving ability *in any realm* are the aces in the hole. For us, programming is just a tool, a means to an end, that happens to be very useful in solving the real problems our products are designed to handle. A mechanic who is very skilled with a torque wrench isn't necessarily equipped to rebuild an engine.
# posted by masquerader @ 15:13 ::
