Comment by mumblemumble
5 years ago
The profession needs a stronger culture of apprenticeship.
In between learning the principles incorrectly from books, and learning them inefficiently at the school of hard knocks, there's a middle path of learning them from a decent mentor.
The problem is that there is a huge amount of “senior” devs who only got that title for having been around and useless for a long time. It is the best for all to not have them mentoring anyone.
But otherwise I agree, it’s just hard to recognize good programmers.
Also, good programmers don't necessarily make good mentors.
But I imagine these problems aren't unique to the software industry. It can't be the case that every blacksmith was both a good blacksmith and a good mentor, and yet the system of apprenticeship successfully passed down knowledge from generation to generation for a long time. Maybe the problem is our old friend social media, and how it turns all of us into snobs with imposter syndrome, so few of us feel willing and able to be a mentor.