The Daily Grind 1088 by Mike Gunderloy Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Everyone was too busy arguing about hiring to get any work done yesterday..

• Gilma - Gui for the ILMerge Application revised for .Net 2.0 - Merge multiple .NET assemblies into one without mucking about on the command line.

• Using the Linden Scripting Language - Just in case you want to try working in a language without any tool chain support whatsoever, you can go write Second Life scripts. Hey, it's in DDJ, it must be legit!

• Why Can't Programmers.. Program? - Jeff Atwood sparked a lot of discussion around the blogosphere with this blog entry suggesting that most (199 out of 200 by some estimates) people who apply for programming jobs can't program. Scott Hanselman argues for coding at interviews. I'll just throw a bit of gasoline on the flames by noting that about 90% of the "essential .NET knowledge" and "write this code at an interview" questions I've seen (not specifically on Scott's weblog, but around in general) are beyond me, despite a successful programming career that spans a couple of decades now. There are other skills besides tucking stuff away in your head. Dogged determination, a few basic techniques, brute force, and good skills at looking things up can go a long way in this industry - not that those are the most common skills in this industry (or any other) either. Anyhow, if you feel dumb after reading some of the comments that have been flying around lately, just remember that there's a certain amount of alpha male chest-thumping that goes on whenever these discussions flare up..

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Mike Gunderloy is the editor of Larkware, the daily .NET newspaper of record.