Hiring Decisions
jerf: Well, I made sure to scroll through, but this hasn't been said much yet: You have not provided enough information to answer the question.Every programmer has different skillsets. It is important to match programmer skillsets to their jobs. (Anything that you might object to about that statement, I would consider part of the "matching"; for instance, I can and do match "what the programmer should be learning" to the job too.)Both A and B here have their place; what you haven't described is the type of work you need done. Are you an early phase startup where this is going to be one of two or three critical guys, and working on intensely technical stuff that will be the foundation of the company? Are you a medium-sized company with a lot of grunt programming work that needs to be done competently, but without the need for a lot of creativity and experience?  Hopefully it's obvious how I've stacked the deck on those two descriptions, and more likely it's something in between. What is it?This is the first question to answer before you can answer the "whom should I hire?" question. It is likely that once you answer this question, the choice will be obvious.