Re: Can Dave be cloned?

[Thomas Fischbacher <Thomas.Fischbacher () Physik Uni-Muenchen DE>]

On Tue, 5 Oct 2004, David Stein wrote:

> I need to find one or more smart computer security hackers.  People
> who do research, but have some idea what goes on in the real world. 
> People who write excellent software (especially in Python or Perl) but
> who are not merely software developers.  People who can do software
> engineering in both the forward and reverse directions.  People who
> can make new discoveries without having their hands held.  People who
> are frighteningly intelligent.  People, in short, a lot like Dave
> (well, the arrogance is optional).

Well, I do know quite some guys of that kind who work in the academic 
world. When they don't do some usually quite scary research stuff in 
mathematical/gravitational/string physics, they often like to do some
quite deep unix hacking, frequently even kernel/security related. I've 
seen some of them building Apache modules as a pastime, writing kernel 
drivers, heck, even hacking support for closures into the PHP 
interpreter, things like those.

Almost all of them are expert perl hackers, and quite many of them are 
highly proficient lisp/haskell/ocaml hackers as well. They know how to do 
research, how to chew through a truly hard challenge, they know what they 
can do and what they cannot.

> Do such people come out of school anymore?  Can anyone suggest a good
> way to look for them?  I've found a number of ways (starting with my
> corporate HR department) to get deluged by piles of resumes for MCSE's
> and computer rackstackers and Java ("The COBOL of the 21st Century
> (TM)") programmers, but I can't seem to find any true hackers.  It
> seems like the species is extinct.

My advice is: specifically look for lisp and haskell hackers. These are 
the most advanced languages around, and if someone evidently has fun using 
them, your chances are good that he's quite a sophisticated person.

Don't care whether they are below 25, don't write them off as too old/too 
unflexible/too unexperienced in the real world just because they have a 
PhD. If you have a python project and they come up with the idea of using 
stackless python instead, just let them do so (if possible). Pose the 
problems and the constraints and let them think of their own. What these 
people hate is being told to go for solutions where they just know they 
could do better if you let them.

> The degree of difficulty is increased because I'm looking for someone
> who has to be a US citizen.  It seems like a lot (maybe most) of the
> best work is being done outside the US these days.  From what I can
> tell the brightest US college students aren't interested in computers
> any longer.

Well, with US people I can't help you, sorry, but I think something along 
the lines above will work just as well in the US as outside.

-- 
regards,               tf () cip physik uni-muenchen de              (o_
 Thomas Fischbacher -  http://www.cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de/~tf  //\
(lambda (n) ((lambda (p q r) (p p q r)) (lambda (g x y)           V_/_
(if (= x 0) y (g g (- x 1) (* x y)))) n 1))                  (Debian GNU)
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