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there's really just one simple rule for this: dress exactly the way you are willing to dress at work.

if you underdress, and they give you a hard time about it, you might not fit in well at that company and you dodged a bullet.

if you overdress, there is a chance you will make your interviewer uncomfortable and not get the job.

dress in what you like to wear. its as simple as that. let them hire the real you, and not a front you put on based on some perceived image you have of the company.

Java and C# do facilitate the way a programmer thinks, but maybe not in the way you're thinking of. they won't make you a more genius hacker that comes up with the cleverest code. they'll make you think longer and harder about your engineering decisions and the ramifications they have on a large project.

my list is pretty different. i'm gonna totally exclude the functional language category. functional languages can do some really cool things and some people swear by them, but none of them are things that you should know for professional purposes.

a low level language - C is the most important one by a million miles

a high level enterprise oriented language - Java or C#

a high level scripting language - Python, Ruby, Perl

Unix Shell Scripting (bash is the most popular i guess)

the frontend web stack - HTML/CSS/JavaScript

obviously people will have widely varying degrees of proficiency between those categories, but everyone should be at least familiar with those categories if not an expert in all of them. you probably should be an expert in one of them though. having a "native tongue" is a useful thing.

[dead] 15 years ago

interesting list, if somewhat racist. i'm sure someone could compile a similar failure list for basically any particular nationality or ethnic group. better question would be "do businesses that utilize Indian services or Personnel have a hire failure rate then otherwise?" the implication of the list is yes. i'm doubtful its true though.

i will say this though: you get what you pay for. failures related to underpaid, hasty development in code sweatshops (indian or otherwise) is obviously going to be low quality.

I'm a City College Student. I've taken 2 courses with Prof. McCracken and spoken with him privately on several occasions as well. He was an amazing man. A truly kind heart who knew how to bring out the best in people. Teaching was something he was very passionate about, he was still teaching courses last spring, well past the point of retirement. Dan McCracken knew how to make a difference to people and that was his real gift.

He could instruct in technical subjects, but he was already over that point of his life when I got to meet him. He had written his books, done his service with the ACM, made his contributions to the profession. What he devoted himself to later in life was cultivating people. He knew exactly how to nudge a student in the right direction to make them press onward. It worked for me. I don't think I would have made it through my freshman year without his encouragement.

I'll miss him. He was a wonderful person, a great teacher, and a warm presence. We should all be so lucky to as to know someone like him.