199 out of 200 programmers can't program?

Can it be that 199 out of 200 programmers can't program?

"Like me, the author is having trouble with the fact that 199 out of 200 applicants for every programming job can't write code at all. I repeat: they can't write any code whatsoever."

Maybe so. What if you could screen them by watching them type a program over the web? Now you can with See[Mike]Code (not this Mike). Use this while you talk to the candidate over the phone... Nice.

Jeff Atwood explains how this works. The recommendation is to keep it short - the program you ask for should be about 10 lines long. You'll be amazed how many are stumped.

things I don't know

I do a lot of "programming" and I think I know a thing or two about what I'm doing. Well maybe programming isn't the right term - so I put it in quotes there. What I do is hack around, a script here, a script there.

Today, I stumbled on a real programmmer's blog, Bartosz Milewski. I read (skimmed really) a couple posts. Amazing the level of detail in these. Then I went and checked out his business, peer-to-peer version control tool.

Wait, I thought, peer-to-peer is just for pirates and other scoundrals - right? But it really clicked with me. At my company we develop SoCs using many sites. I wondered how would this work for us? Can it handle zillions of gigs of data? I don't have time to investigate - plus its not my job - but some day, if I have the time, I'll read up on it.