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This is definitely what I was getting at. My admittedly fairly small sample makes me think I'd rather hire someone who appears to be an excellent developer in general and train them on a new language/ framework than someone who appears mediocre but already has experience.

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I think the same applies to junior developers as well. Someone who is eager to learn, and does so on their own time to try and learn new things will give you far better results than someone who only has whatever experience they gained via internships, or as classroom assignments.

The best developers I've ever met all have one thing in common. They've all written stuff outside of school and the workplace. Not that everyone keeps doing so, but they all have at least when starting out.

Totally agree. Good programmers have a lot of knowledge that transfers well between different languages and environments in my opinion. Put another way: language syntax is accidental knowledge, but how to program is essential knowledge.

More here: http://henrikwarne.com/2014/12/15/programmer-knowledge/

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