Looking in all the wrong places

I am a regular programmer with about 30 years experience. I try to cross skill in my spare time as I realize stuff I did when I was young is not supposedly relevant any more.

So for this year, first I wrote a Windows phone app to see how that went. Its in the windows store and is a File encryption app. That took a while to write as xaml has a big learning curve. I didn't really enjoy WinRT that much. Sorry not enough room for a screenshot.

So then I had an idea and  I thought I would have a crack at an edge tracing algorithm. and was curious if I could do it and I had an idea. Here is a work in progress on my first cut trying to edge trace an image in a web browser. That's the shaded red with the numbered vertices. Written in c#/wpf. 

Then after someone mentioned Go to me, I got fascinated with this language, and my first mickey mouse app searched folders for file duplicates using maps and md5 hashing. Something like FileDupe (google it). This is my first go program after watching some training videos. Now i'm trying to learn GitHub.

in addition to this stuff 

1. A number of times I have sold my own software on websites that I created.
2. I used to reverse  engineer and patch games in machine code in the 80's so I could play them for free
3. Having done a lot of CAD programming, I had to write my own searching, hashing, list and vector routines. I wrote my own b-tree database in 1 contract. This all teaches you how to write efficiently and how computers work. This grounding has helped TONS in finding faults and bugs. You would be amazed how many programmers don't know what a registry is ( I'm not talking about the Windows registry btw )

Why am i mentioning all this stuff you ask?

Simple. Its to show I have motivation. I am willing to learn new stuff. I am always improving myself. To me motivation/attitude scores way  higher than a high scoring degree or test results or being good at talking bullshit or ass kissing. But then I'm not an interviewer so what would I know.

Then its judgement time...
Jeff, do you have experience in Agile? or Test Driven development? Or Domain Design? or Enterprise Service Bus? Can you repeat to me the almost never used [setting] in a config file that does x,y,z? Provide exact SQL syntax on demand?

No? Then obviously you can't be a good programmer.

Seriously, people need to understand that culture and methodology is *easy* to learn. You can learn it in hours. Will this get the best programmer?. Definitely not in my opinion. You will get someone with a great memory who might also have a lousy attitude and in the end won't be productive and go "prima donna" on everyone. And Oh YES, I have worked with those types before... VERY destructive to the workplace, but hey they get good scores at the interview, so they must be good hey?

Then you get to work with people who seem to have no ambition what-so-ever to improve or learn. You think people even notice one way or the other ? No they don't. Its frustrating.