A worthy post that I commend to your attention:
Finding a programmer that can program
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From the post:
But now, having taken care of this, how do you find a programmer that can actually program?
Easy! Find one that has programs he can show you!
I would never hire a programmer that can’t show me code. There must be something wrong with him, because programmers write programs.
That’s just what we do. If we didn’t what kind of programmers would we be?
Get involved in some computer project outside of class. It can be a research project in the department, or something you just want to do.