Hi i have a question for you guys if you had a choice of hiring one of two programmers.

One of them is a natural born programming talent, he has been programming since he was 14 year old and he has been programming all sorts of things by him self, 3d renders,games,his own frameworks, he is really good at algorithms and problem solving. He is now about 25 years old and is looking for a job after some unchallenged years of college the only experience he has is working on his own/university stuff and some open source project. This guy spends all his free time programming and has several pet projects at home.

The other person is a 37 year old career programmer. He has been programming since he graduated from university at the age of 26 and have been working since then. He did not have an interest in programming before university. During his studies he discovered that programming was fun and challenging but it never was a "passion". During his career he mainly worked with "enterprise" platforms such as .net or javaEE. He mainly have done database business applications and thus is lacking skills of the young talent like abstract problem solving or algorithms. But he know the tools he has been using during the years and is reliable and almost always makes his boss happy. He keeps him self updated in the platform and tools he has and is using. But outside the office walls he don't touch any code at all.

Witch one would you hire?

Would you favor one of them in certain projects?

Do you think that if the young talent learns his tools he will be a better programmer than the older one?

Would your decision be different if both of them where lacking a degree? or if only one of them was lacking a degree be the old and experienced or the young genius.