> Someone that could whiteboard correct programs written in SKI is someone I'd be delighted to hire. Likewise someone that can write correct forth by hand.
This is potentially true.
Nevertheless don't confuse "the kind of person who has very nerdy interests, thus I would like to sit near to him in the office" with "candidate who will likely be the best one to do the work that has to be done in the best possible way". While I do agree that cognitive capabilities are one factor that often correlates well with the subclause "in the best possible way", there exist other factors, too. I don't claim that you mingled these two very different personal profiles, but in my opinion quite some programmers with nerdy interests do.
But if you work in an environment where being able to whiteboard correct programs written in SKI or being able to write correct Forth by hand is indeed (plausibly) highly correlated with "likely [to] be the best one to do the work that has to be done in the best possible way" I congratulate you on having a work environment that in my opinion very few programmers can relish.
I think I like teams with specialisms. I can think of a few instances where things went better because people were doing things they loved, where other people would have really struggled with the same task.
I'm on ten years of trying and failing to make any sense of cmake. As a nominally C++ developer, I owe being able to contribute to the projects substantially to other people managing to make cmake do things, and periodically baby-stepping me through trivial changes to it. I'm eternally grateful to the many people who have helped me with that, though I'd also like cmake to die and go away forever.
I remember James being the right guy for release checklists. Every release he'd read the checklist (not try to remember it) so saw when it had changed. Did all the things on it, even when some sounded redundant, or couldn't possibly be worth checking. Took hours, showed every sign of enjoying the process.
I also remember Richard for wizardry with procedural arithmetic. For loops nested six deep with exciting integer arithmetic scattered across the levels implementing some AI thing, written with no indication that he was losing track of the details. Would cheerfully review code of unreasonable complexity and pick out errors in it from the browser diff.
I'm in compiler dev. Lots of applied graph theory really. Hypothetical SKI/forth chap would have better spacial reasoning than me and sometimes that's the limiting factor in the work. Thank you - it is fortunate that our current environment is supportive of language implementation work, long may that remain the case.
This is potentially true.
Nevertheless don't confuse "the kind of person who has very nerdy interests, thus I would like to sit near to him in the office" with "candidate who will likely be the best one to do the work that has to be done in the best possible way". While I do agree that cognitive capabilities are one factor that often correlates well with the subclause "in the best possible way", there exist other factors, too. I don't claim that you mingled these two very different personal profiles, but in my opinion quite some programmers with nerdy interests do.
But if you work in an environment where being able to whiteboard correct programs written in SKI or being able to write correct Forth by hand is indeed (plausibly) highly correlated with "likely [to] be the best one to do the work that has to be done in the best possible way" I congratulate you on having a work environment that in my opinion very few programmers can relish.