I have to say I disagree; their list provides some good, sufficient indicators of a good programmer. You appear to have read an assertion that these are necessary qualities into the article, but I'm not seeing that anywhere.
> Everyone has an opinion, assholes included.
Not true in my experience; there are plenty of apathetic floaters who don't care enough to form an opinion about anything. They use what they're told to use, don't look around at anything, don't form comparative opinions, and don't care. They all produced terrible work, because they didn't care enough to form opinions, or look around for better tools and techniques, and so never learned anything
> Many of the best programmers I know contribute nothing to open source because of confidentiality agreements.
Absolutely. But again, it's a good sufficient tell, not a necessary quality.
> You mean when it's fun specing something out or at 4 in the morning when everything is down?
Yes. You want them to fundamentally enjoy what they do. Dispassionate automatons may exist who nonetheless churn out solid work, but in my experience there are far fewer passionate, horrible developers than uncaring horrible developers, so it is again a good sufficient distinguisher to help find a good developer.
> And what does it cost to maintain or fix it? There are 2 ways to find out. a. Read the source. b. Wait a year. Which would you prefer?
c. Contact previous employers/coworkers, see what their reputation for shipping (and shipping quality) is.
> Who cares? What they do on their own time is their own business. This is an indicator of nothing.
It's an indicator of intellectual curiosity. Again, intellectually incurious developers who nonetheless do solid work and stay up to date may exist out there, somewhere, but I've never met one, so it's yet another good sufficient identifier.
> This is important for all people, for all things, so it doesn't even need to be on this list.
If you really believe that, you haven't met a lot of hiring managers who completely and utterly forget about it or think it is unimportant for technical positions. There are people who absolutely need this reminder.
> Everyone has an opinion, assholes included.
Not true in my experience; there are plenty of apathetic floaters who don't care enough to form an opinion about anything. They use what they're told to use, don't look around at anything, don't form comparative opinions, and don't care. They all produced terrible work, because they didn't care enough to form opinions, or look around for better tools and techniques, and so never learned anything
> Many of the best programmers I know contribute nothing to open source because of confidentiality agreements.
Absolutely. But again, it's a good sufficient tell, not a necessary quality.
> You mean when it's fun specing something out or at 4 in the morning when everything is down?
Yes. You want them to fundamentally enjoy what they do. Dispassionate automatons may exist who nonetheless churn out solid work, but in my experience there are far fewer passionate, horrible developers than uncaring horrible developers, so it is again a good sufficient distinguisher to help find a good developer.
> And what does it cost to maintain or fix it? There are 2 ways to find out. a. Read the source. b. Wait a year. Which would you prefer?
c. Contact previous employers/coworkers, see what their reputation for shipping (and shipping quality) is.
> Who cares? What they do on their own time is their own business. This is an indicator of nothing.
It's an indicator of intellectual curiosity. Again, intellectually incurious developers who nonetheless do solid work and stay up to date may exist out there, somewhere, but I've never met one, so it's yet another good sufficient identifier.
> This is important for all people, for all things, so it doesn't even need to be on this list.
If you really believe that, you haven't met a lot of hiring managers who completely and utterly forget about it or think it is unimportant for technical positions. There are people who absolutely need this reminder.
> b. Hire a programmer to hire a programmer.
Turtles all the way down?