Well, that wasn't part of the conversation until now.
In a sense, I have hinted at this. There are two elements, education and experience.
I firmly believe good programmers come from having a solid foundation built on low level code. That means a good progression might be assembler, Forth and then C. If I ask someone to explain how a list is stored and manipulated in memory in a language like Python, I expect at least a plausible explanation rather than a shrug. For me it doesn't even have to be be absolutely correct to show me they have gotten their hands dirty with low level code.
Forth is interesting not only because of the RPN paradigm; one can learn a lot from implementing it from scratch on any microprocessor. From there you go on to actually turning that into a useful console-based computer. For example, implement all the peripheral drivers, a file system, file manager, text/code editor, etc. I would not have anyone touch C until they have completed the prior work.
There's a reason for which companies like Google have seemingly crazy hiring processes for software developers: Our schools seem to be doing a crap job of training them. If that were not the case, there would be no need for such tests. A degree with a decent GPA would be enough.
> Do you think bad programmers should all be fired and blacklisted from the whole industry?
I am assuming that's not a serious question. There are bad doctors, attorneys, cops, teachers and carpenters. There is no such thing as equality of outcomes in anything. Hopefully the natural process in each domain expunges incompetence over time. That's the best we can hope for. Other than that, I can't tell you what we should do.
I have to go back to my premise (flipping it around a bit): A different programming language isn't going to magically turn a bad programmer into a good one; much like a $4000 computerized welder wasn't going to make me a better welder.
At the extremes, if someone doesn't know how to solve problems computationally, there's no language you can throw at them that will turn them into CS problem solvers.
> Proponents of new languages are winning the debate over how to fix systemic problems in the software industry. The reason they are winning is because their opponents in this debate do not have a coherent solution. If you can suggest one, maybe you'll change everything.
No. That's not correct. The reasons we keep taking crazy rides up and down a bunch of languages is that developers are coming out of schools with skills that require them to start at that level. As I said in another comment, the first thing every recent grad reaches for is a complex object structure. Because that's all the know. They don't actually know we were doing things like sending people to the moon without any of that stuff. They think it's necessary. And so, they develop tools and frameworks "in their image", if you will. Which means that the entire thing is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I remember one of the most impactful examples my son (a recent MS CS grad) experienced while working with me on a project. He needed a serial communications library for a robotics system we were building. He reached for a library and used it. The thing did not perform well and was giving us problems. That's when I became involved. The library consisted of, I don't know, two to four pages of classes, methods, etc. After understanding what it was doing I re-wrote what we needed in something like ten lines of procedural code.
The unnecessary bloat in various programming languages ecosystems is something that should make anyone take pause. I mean, you see things like someone creating an entire object hierarchy with methods and properties for what amounts to managing a few thousand bytes of data in an array in memory. Instead of a raw close-to-the-machine for loop iterating through the data you end-up with a dozen objects instantiated, copious properties, layers of methods and...well, you get the point (I hope).