This blogpost has been making the rounds on the Social Medias as of late:

https://blog.svpino.com/2015/05/07/five-programming-problems-every-software-engineer-should-be-able-to-solve-in-less-than-1-hour

I'm sure many of my hacker peeps read this article and thought to themselves "YASSS! This guy is so totally right!!1! Why n00bs gotta n00b! RTFM, Br0!"

This stuff is toxic, will not help onboard new devs, or improve the habits of careless devs. I feel your pain, but this isn't going to actually solve your problem, but conflate it by creating a hostile environment. This is a classic case of #doingitwrong

I understand that the author is frustrated with sub-par candidates applying for positions they are not qualified for, but this kind of: "You are not allowed to even identify as a ________ until you meet my list of arbitrary requirements" is dangerous.

Yes, it would be nice if everyone applying to your open position could solve these problems, but that group of people you are bemoaning here, those who are irreverently spamming their resumes everywhere, are not going to care about this post, or what you think qualifies them. They are just playing the job-lottery...

You know who will care and take it very seriously? All the aspiring programmers and software engineers, who you just told were not good enough to even call themselves or even think of themselves as a programmer... Why would you want to work with people who don't think you are good enough or worth it?

You can say someone is not qualified for a position, but please don't try to tell someone who they are, or how they should think about themselves. Everyone has to start somewhere. Programmers do not emerge fully-formed from the womb--they learn from others, and from failure.