Looking for Python programmers--where to search?

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

On Fri, 25 Aug 2000 14:52:38 -0700, Eric Lee Green <eric at estinc.com>
declaimed the following in comp.lang.python:

> So far he has been plugging away for two weeks, and still takes 2 days to do
> what I could do in the course of an hour, and still has trouble dealing with
> the fact that he can, e.g.,  operate upon lists without having to write oodles
> of list-manipulation code and etc. (e.g. there was one database operation
> where the most efficient way of handling things was to query all the data out
> into one list then iterate over the list with a 'for' loop, and he went
> through a bunch of hooplah with cursors to implement the same thing -- because
> in "C", you can't work on lists without writing a bunch of code). My only
> conclusion can be that while C++ programmers can learn the basics of the
> Python language in an hour, it takes them a lot longer than an hour to be able
> to write real programs in a timely manner using the language.
>
	Ah, a coding specialist instead of a software engineer <G> I
sometimes think schools shouldn't let a student write a program until
/after/ a few courses on algorithms, language design, etc. <G>


	Some years back (and apologies that no Python gets into this) we
(department I work in) had the job of converting lots of archaic files
(collectively called a "database" by the department, but really just a
lot of diverse flat/indexed files) into Sybase.

	They (management) dragged in a person whose primary skill was:
he'd done Sybase stuff... He was supposed to take the manuals describing
all these files and generate Sybase schemas. Not only did he not have
any knowledge of the application data (and hence had no idea of what
really belonged where or how the discrete files linked together), but it
seemed he had no skill at basic normalization (breaking apart the
biggest file we had into about three tables). /I/ basically had to
sketch out the entire normalized schema for him.

	IMHO, this was an example of management focusing too much on the
tool (Sybase, and getting a "Sybase programmer" working on it) and
ignoring the experience and knowledge others had of the data. ANYONE
else on the project who'd worked with those files could have taken a
cheap textbook on RDBM/normalization and produced a generic schema...
/then/ a Sybase person could have implemented it (or Oracle person since
by that time I think Sybase had been tossed out the door).


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