Beginning programming
I was telling Liv about the fizzbuzz test (original post: http://imranontech.com/2007/01/24/using-fizzbuzz-to-find-developers-who-grok-coding/ jeff atwood: http://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ caveat from joel spolsky: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html)
The basic concept being that lots of people apply to a software engineering job who can't reliably right an extremely simple program (like, loop from 1 to 10). I've heard that a lot of places, enough that I'm sure something like that is true, although I'm not sure exactly what -- is it only for new graduates, who walked their way through a degree without grokking the basic principles? Or as Joel says, is it people who apply but never really hold a software job? Or is it that most people can hold a job by being "good enough" and muddle through and never need to understand the basics?
Opinions from friends who do interviews?
It always makes me feel introspective: am I judging myself too harshly? Or not harshly enough?
However, what came up in the conversation with Liv is something that I hadn't thought about, that many people I know got into hobby programming on 80s computers, when basically any programming exercise at all involved creating a whole program from scratch and running it -- when it was basically inconceivable to do anything else. But in this conversation, I blithely treated that as automatic, but realised that nowadays, it isn't. That many learning exercises do involve that, but that when I write software for real, it's quite rare I write a whole program from scratch, rather than plugging parts into an existing thing, or iteratively improving a program I already created. And that that's experience which is much less obvious than it used to be (hopefully within the experience of people applying for the sort of jobs being talked about, but not necessarily within the experience of someone who has gone quite far as a hobby).
Spinach Fritters
I saw a recipe and thought "ooh, that sounds nice and really easy" and tried it and it was and it was. And I'm embarrassed that's still news at this point in my life :( But I'm pleased that I did try that and it turned out well.
Sarcasm
http://blog.plover.com/prog/Moonpig.html
From an old post by Mark Dominus, "in the short run it kept the customer happy, and that is the most important thing; I say this entirely in earnest, without either sarcasm or bitterness."
Knowing his blogging style quite well, I know that he actually means that. As in, the trade off probably was the best thing to do, and it turned out well, and he's pleased and not bitter.
But boy howdy, it's nice to know that there are people who find it even harder than I do to convey "I'm not being sarcastic", even when they're literally saying "I'm not being sarcastic"! :)
I was telling Liv about the fizzbuzz test (original post: http://imranontech.com/2007/01/24/using-fizzbuzz-to-find-developers-who-grok-coding/ jeff atwood: http://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ caveat from joel spolsky: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html)
The basic concept being that lots of people apply to a software engineering job who can't reliably right an extremely simple program (like, loop from 1 to 10). I've heard that a lot of places, enough that I'm sure something like that is true, although I'm not sure exactly what -- is it only for new graduates, who walked their way through a degree without grokking the basic principles? Or as Joel says, is it people who apply but never really hold a software job? Or is it that most people can hold a job by being "good enough" and muddle through and never need to understand the basics?
Opinions from friends who do interviews?
It always makes me feel introspective: am I judging myself too harshly? Or not harshly enough?
However, what came up in the conversation with Liv is something that I hadn't thought about, that many people I know got into hobby programming on 80s computers, when basically any programming exercise at all involved creating a whole program from scratch and running it -- when it was basically inconceivable to do anything else. But in this conversation, I blithely treated that as automatic, but realised that nowadays, it isn't. That many learning exercises do involve that, but that when I write software for real, it's quite rare I write a whole program from scratch, rather than plugging parts into an existing thing, or iteratively improving a program I already created. And that that's experience which is much less obvious than it used to be (hopefully within the experience of people applying for the sort of jobs being talked about, but not necessarily within the experience of someone who has gone quite far as a hobby).
Spinach Fritters
I saw a recipe and thought "ooh, that sounds nice and really easy" and tried it and it was and it was. And I'm embarrassed that's still news at this point in my life :( But I'm pleased that I did try that and it turned out well.
Sarcasm
http://blog.plover.com/prog/Moonpig.html
From an old post by Mark Dominus, "in the short run it kept the customer happy, and that is the most important thing; I say this entirely in earnest, without either sarcasm or bitterness."
Knowing his blogging style quite well, I know that he actually means that. As in, the trade off probably was the best thing to do, and it turned out well, and he's pleased and not bitter.
But boy howdy, it's nice to know that there are people who find it even harder than I do to convey "I'm not being sarcastic", even when they're literally saying "I'm not being sarcastic"! :)