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Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?

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Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?

#11

Post by krrishd »

corobo wrote: post #8
aeriklawson wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes do projects in new frameworks or languages as a learning experience - in a professional setting I would still default to tried and true tools that I have a lot of experience with and are relatively stable. How do you differentiate between individuals like you describe and people like me who like to experiment for education's sake?

> How do you differentiate between individuals like you describe and people like me who like to experiment for education's sake I wouldn't, that person would - I don't imagine many people put their experiment/education projects in their portfolio

> I don't imagine many people put their experiment/education projects in their portfolio

I highly disagree, experiment/education projects aren't necessarily low-quality by default, so I don't see why they wouldn't make it into a portfolio.

Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?

#12

Post by corobo »

krrishd wrote: post #11
corobo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you differentiate between individuals like you describe and people like me who like to experiment for education's sake I wouldn't, that person would - I don't imagine many people put their experiment/education projects in their portfolio

> I don't imagine many people put their experiment/education projects in their portfolio I highly disagree, experiment/education projects aren't necessarily low-quality by default, so I don't see why they wouldn't make it into a portfolio.

That's a fair point but if it was an absolute top notch experiment/education banger then that person's going to the top of the pile anyway because my experiments in new languages are 10% todo lists and 90% abandoned hello worlds

Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?

#14

Post by cableshaft »

corobo wrote: post #12
krrishd wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't imagine many people put their experiment/education projects in their portfolio I highly disagree, experiment/education projects aren't necessarily low-quality by default, so I don't see why they wouldn't make it into a portfolio.

That's a fair point but if it was an absolute top notch experiment/education banger then that person's going to the top of the pile anyway because my experiments in new languages are 10% todo lists and 90% abandoned hello worlds

One of the ways I learn new languages/frameworks is by porting something I've already made before and don't really have to work out how to design it again.

For example, I've ported my Proximity game a bunch of times. Some of these never got completely finished and released:

* Actionscript (Flash, released and playable online)

* Java (J2ME and later Kindle -- the Kindle version looked awesome, too bad Active Content is no longer a thing)

* C++ (Popcap framework)

* C# (XNA, released on Xbox 360 on Xbox Live Indie Games)

* Objective-C (OpenGL ES, released on App Store)

* Python (I just used text graphics)

* Lua (Pico-8, almost done but not quite)

* Physical board game prototype, hoping to find an interested publisher

* C# again (Unity this time, and making it in 3D)

Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?

#15

Post by wibbleywobbley »

robpethick wrote: post #10
indescions_2017 wrote: post #4

Look for "fit & finish" in a completed app. There is an old saying: "we're 90% done, now all we have to do is the remaining 90%!" I like to see that polish. It implies an understanding of the craft that is required, attention to detail, good debugging skills and an appreciation of human-centric design principles.

This sounds really great - but how does something look 'fit & finish'? Is a decent Readme.md with descriptions + screenshots of a sharp app good enough, or does it need to be actually deployed somewhere public?

Typically when I am presenting a project as part of an interview I spin it up in AWS (or elsewhere) and provide login credentials for them to actually play with the application. It makes it a lot easier to discuss the specifics of how an application was built when you can demo the application directly.

Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?

#16

Post by lastofus »

Something with a vibrant community built up around it is most impressive to me. It shows a degree of communication and management, not to mention marketing.

Otherwise, most github repos are not that impressive as I have no idea how long it took to write (did it take a few months to write something most devs could write in a few days?), or if the candidate even wrote it at all.

Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?

#17

Post by probinso »

corobo wrote: post #12
krrishd wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't imagine many people put their experiment/education projects in their portfolio I highly disagree, experiment/education projects aren't necessarily low-quality by default, so I don't see why they wouldn't make it into a portfolio.

That's a fair point but if it was an absolute top notch experiment/education banger then that person's going to the top of the pile anyway because my experiments in new languages are 10% todo lists and 90% abandoned hello worlds

I can see why some people might use to-do lists as their go-to, but those often are not representative of actually exploring a language.

I guess there is probably a large community of people who only share publicly projects they consider portfolio Worthy. I have found sharing valuable in both failed and successful projects when interviewing, teaching, and spec'ing a new project.

You're correct in noting that some of these projects fail, but as long as there is sufficient code the projects they can often be interesting.

Sort of side projects that I pull together in another languages are often to explore language features that are not readily available in my common tongue. Certain languages have made completing certain tasks far easier like heavy Matrix programs in Octave or Julia, n-body simulators with extended unit types in Julia, multi-threaded cryptographic toy project in erlang, statistics problems and visualization in R, easy concurrent types and strong explicit typing for model train controller and Ada. I have also used a new language for a interview coding challenge (for fun).

Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?

#18

Post by roryisok »

cableshaft wrote: post #14
corobo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fair point but if it was an absolute top notch experiment/education banger then that person's going to the top of the pile anyway because my experiments in new languages are 10% todo lists and 90% abandoned hello worlds

One of the ways I learn new languages/frameworks is by porting something I've already made before and don't really have to work out how to design it again. For example, I've ported my Proximity game a bunch of times. Some of these never got completely finished and released: * Actionscript (Flash, released and playable online) * Java (J2ME and later Kindle -- the Kindle version looked awesome, too bad Active Content i…

Physical board game is a cool language. You have to roll your own garbage collection though.

Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?

#19

Post by roryisok »

krrishd wrote: post #11
corobo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you differentiate between individuals like you describe and people like me who like to experiment for education's sake I wouldn't, that person would - I don't imagine many people put their experiment/education projects in their portfolio

> I don't imagine many people put their experiment/education projects in their portfolio I highly disagree, experiment/education projects aren't necessarily low-quality by default, so I don't see why they wouldn't make it into a portfolio.

I'm in a situation where a lot of my work projects have been axed or replaced with newer projects. I have very little professional stuff to show, sadly. But I do have some side projects I'm very proud of, and I'm dammed if I'm leaving them out

Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?

#20

Post by agitator »

I like seeing personal projects that solve interesting problems, and that show that the person really considered the use cases and application of their project (UX design, functionality, etc.). There are good engineers, and then there are engineers that focus on why/who they are doing the engineer and I think that's really important, especially in a startup setting where people need to be intelligent self starters and hold themselves to high standards without having someone breathing down their neck.
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