Someone having a strong tool preference and thinking their choice of tool is good enough that it has no important downsides for their usage (and being aware of how to steer around pitfalls) is not automatically an incompetent programmer. Maybe it tells you that they chose their tool thoughtfully, it is a good tool for the usage, and they learned the tool well, and are enthusiastic rather than negative about it.
Most people who think they could improve a language don't have any background in programming languages, don't have a good nose for what would actually be an improvement, and would actually screw it up badly. Having declined to shave that yak for years hardly means that someone is incompetent. Are you interviewing people to create new general-purpose programming languages? Do you often build new programming languages as part of projects? If so, you must miss deadlines a lot.
It's incredible to me how interviewing is in the stone age: some guy gets assigned to interview people because it needs to be done, and how hard could it be anyway? Then he Googles questions to ask, which are more or less arbitrary, and grades them more or less arbitrarily. And the same guy who asks is the one who judges the quality of the question, which is tied up with ego and confirmation bias. Over time, he adjusts to his own taste, but is accountable to nothing else. You get a process which, at best, selects people who are like the interviewer, because the interviewer assumes he is good, so other good people have backgrounds and opinions (and demographics) like his.
It's the same process that 10-year-old boys at a skate park might use to judge whether a new boy is a "poseur." It depends as much on whether the judges think the new boy is like them or dresses correctly or whatever as on any meaningful evidence of ability.
Most people who think they could improve a language don't have any background in programming languages, don't have a good nose for what would actually be an improvement, and would actually screw it up badly. Having declined to shave that yak for years hardly means that someone is incompetent. Are you interviewing people to create new general-purpose programming languages? Do you often build new programming languages as part of projects? If so, you must miss deadlines a lot.
It's incredible to me how interviewing is in the stone age: some guy gets assigned to interview people because it needs to be done, and how hard could it be anyway? Then he Googles questions to ask, which are more or less arbitrary, and grades them more or less arbitrarily. And the same guy who asks is the one who judges the quality of the question, which is tied up with ego and confirmation bias. Over time, he adjusts to his own taste, but is accountable to nothing else. You get a process which, at best, selects people who are like the interviewer, because the interviewer assumes he is good, so other good people have backgrounds and opinions (and demographics) like his.
It's the same process that 10-year-old boys at a skate park might use to judge whether a new boy is a "poseur." It depends as much on whether the judges think the new boy is like them or dresses correctly or whatever as on any meaningful evidence of ability.