[Chicago] Pizza providers update

[Kumar McMillan]

On 8/19/07, Kenneth P. Stox <ken at stox.org> wrote:
> > In fact, I'm not kidding here, but we recently had to mandate that
> > front-end web development be limited to RUBY because the resources we
> > can find are greater in the Ruby dept than in Python.  This is sort of
> > sad because we'd rather use Python for these things.
>
> Have you thought of developing python talent in-house? This can be a
> very effective mechanism as your developers will more in sync with your
> internal methodologies. Continuing education also helps build employee
> loyalty.

We have tried twice to work with a developer who had no Python
experience, having him learn Python while implementing the project.
It failed both times because we didn't have enough time to mentor the
developers.  We had to scrap the code.  This might not always be the
case, even with more or less time to mentor, but such a strategy is
very risky ;)  If we were a bigger company we could probably do it
better.  When I contracted briefly with IBM I noticed that they do
this - they hire people who have limited [or even no] Java knowledge
and they train them on the WebSphere product.

As with any language that wants to grow, Python needs more
"switchers."  Perhaps more people should write those silly articles on
"Moving from PHP to Python", or whatever ... or even going to other
local user groups and presenting some kind of intro to python.  I see
a lot of Java developers in Chicago switching to Ruby - perhaps it is
the influence of Thoughtworks or 37 Signals, I don't know.

Kumar