What makes a portal developer

[paul]

What makes a portal developer ? Does it important to know the Java and especially J2EE programming for a good portal developer ?

[kev woodman]

You'd have to define a portal I guess Paul. What makes a good developer is an interesting question?

There's a good article at seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=1064 which suggests questions you could ask developers at interviews.

If you're looking for developers for a project that really needs the sort of high performance that J2EE brings then perhaps you should hire an IT Project Manager or Analyst first and let then handle recruitment.

Personally I think that good devs have an eye for detail, an inquiring mind, a love of problem solving etc etc

And truly great devs have all of the above plus are good looking, charming and almost certainly have a name that begins with K

[paul]

Thanks for that link Kev but that might be not suitable for a portal developer as he need to develop, manage, administer WebSphere applications, and should have that much skill to develop interactive features involved with WebSphere Portal. Anyway I keep you on preferred list.

[kev woodman]

Ooh WebSphere - that's some serious kit that is. That kind of portal isn't common, it seems more of an administrators job than purely a developer. You should probably look for someone with previous experience or experience of a similar product (not easy I know). Don't Portlet applications communicate with the server through an API? If this is the case then any developer should be able to write code that integrates with the system.