the "no good Perl jobs"/"no good Perl programmers" myth

[Adrian Howard]

On 7 Aug 2006, at 15:15, Nicholas Clark wrote:

> That's an interesting observation. How does one assess Perl ability  
> correctly,
> reliably and with minimal risk (as perceived by the management)?
> I don't have a good answer to that. I'm curious what the london.pm  
> hive mind
> thinks.

Dunno about anybody else, but I prefer to do:

1) Phone interview with a few techie questions to remove the complete  
idiots, ensure they're not a language bigots, etc.

2) If at all possible a couple of hours pair programming on a real  
code base.

Adrian