General Discussion

That's a problem. At one time, I owned a small shareware software company. I had done all of the coding for the apps I was creating by myself. For various reasons, I was using Microsoft Visual Basic to create software for Windows. Some disputed that idea with me, but I found that it worked quite well for my purposes.

At one point, I decided that I might hire someone to do some of the coding, so I advertised for a Visual Basic programmer. Not many of those around, but I got a few applications. I narrowed it down to a couple of people and paid them at the advertised rate to test for the job.

The problem was a fairly basic one. I wanted to create a routine that would sort a medium--sized array that was in a table in the software. Basically, it was a simple address label database with five fields. I wanted to include a method for an alphabetical sort of the table based on any of the five fields, which were configured as an array, which I stored in memory in the application to increase the speed of operations. So, I assigned my applicants to write that sorting routing.

I had already done the job, and the sort was lightning fast. The table had no more than 750 rows and five columns.

After a longer time than I expected, the two applicants got it set up, each using a different array sorting process.

I tested their work with existing data. One was quite a bit faster than the other, but neither was anywhere near the speed of my routine. I hired nobody.

What they missed was that Visual Basic already had that sort built into the software. All you had to do was load the data into an actual table, which you could make invisible. Then, you could sort that table off-screen and replace the existing table with the sorted one. The whole process took less than 5 seconds. Microsoft's native sort was way faster than anything you could write in Visual Basic.

Neither of the applicants considered using an internal sorting tool, and wanted to show off their sorting routines. For me, the goal was "get it done and make it work fast."

I knew what Visual Basic had already done internally. The applicants didn't, so they wasted a huge amount of time writing their sorting routine, instead of using what was already coded by Microsoft.

Creativity. Doing things to meet goals rather than to be clever. I never did hire a coder, but continued to do it all myself.