Matt Young (CTO of Geonomics) came along to give a talk about “Building and growing tech team”.

What makes a great developer?

• Aptitude
• Attitude
• Little core knowledge

Good companies hire based on that, not on ‘ohh we need 7 years java experience and you only got 6’.

I’d say it’s 90% attitude and 10% action. Talent is a word people came up with when they couldn’t explain why someone is good at something. Like when people didn’t know where fire comes from, they decided there must be a fire god.

What constitutes core knowledge, you say ?

Algorithms and algorithmic complexity

Good developers are algoholics. Period.

Object orientated programming (OOP) concepts

What is a Class? What is an Object? (If you are rubyist, then EVERYTHING!).

Functional programming concepts is a bonus!

Types

Static vs dynamic typing. Advantages and disadvantages. Speak both types of languages?

Memory

Heap, Stack, Bits and Bytes. Everything always comes down to 0’s and 1’s.

And most importantly : learning is change in behaviour. Nothing less, nothing more.