Re^3: Where are future senior programmers coming from?

[nevyn]

Both theory and experience lead me to believe that people who learned in the small company environment will have a bunch of really, really bad habits that they will never realize are bad habits because they have never worked with anyone who could set them straight.

I'm not sure, it seems unlikely to me that you can get a great programer from a single great mentor. I think a programer who could become great has to look outside their local environment Netnews, books, blogs now and "community websites" for different opinions/approaches, and think about them.

In fact, I'd say that one of the major points of greatness is "one size doesn't fit all" / "everyone or everything is wrong some of the time" and you can't learn that from a single mentor, almost by definition.

[tilly]

You can't logically disprove, A is necessary by arguing that A is not sufficient.

Of course just dealing with one great mentor won't make you a great programmer. And good mentors know that, and encourage people to get exposure to additional outside experiences.

But that doesn't invalidate what I said. Which is that if you've never had exposure to someone who is good, then you've never had a necessary reality check that you need to really get the learning process going.