http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=525236


in reply to Re^2: (OT) Real World Skills Versus CS Skills
in thread (OT) Real World Skills Versus CS Skills

I think that you have made my point for me. Your company has employed you as a developer and made a significant investment in terms of buying software licences and equipping you with the tools to do your job. My hypothesis is that the presence of such a compiler on your machine places you at the more technical end of the scale.

I am not familiar with the latest MS tools but I can relate from experience that Borland ship a free version of their JBuilder tools in edition to the paid for professional and enterprise versions. Anyone could download the free version to evaluate it but it wouldn't necessarily mean that they were a developer.

The comment about server versions of software was more to do with having Oracle server installed on your machine (or on your development server) for development rather than Access.

Is there a server version of C or Perl? How about Python or Ruby?

There aren't necessarily 'server' versions of these languages but you can differentiate between someone who installs Perl in order to get a third party app running and someone who codes using the language and understands it.

I used to help the test team install the command line version of the MS Visual C compiler in order to support an automated test tool. They didn't code in C but were technically expert at automated testing. I also set up a Perl environment in order for colleagues to test a Wiki solution that was based on Perl. They didn't do a scrap of coding but were able to do a technical evaluation of the product.