Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I have no side code projects to show

linkedin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 148 posts

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#131

Post by [deleted] »

je42 wrote: post #128
highCs wrote: post #91

I agree with the author. You can't judge the passion of someone by his behaviour, that's silly. You can be as well a passionate programmer when you don't code home than when you do. However, coding home has one - big - perk: it's almost the only way for you to code something from scratch. Alone. You and your code. You and your progress rate. You and your bugs. You and your choices. You and your mess. Nobody to smooth…

there another side to it. coding alone making all decisions on the fly and as needed can also be very relaxing. in the big company, most of the work is getting agreement; fighting legacy code; planning transitions; making sure everybody is on the same page as they contribute...

[deleted]

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#132

Post by [deleted] »

je42 wrote: post #128
highCs wrote: post #91

I agree with the author. You can't judge the passion of someone by his behaviour, that's silly. You can be as well a passionate programmer when you don't code home than when you do. However, coding home has one - big - perk: it's almost the only way for you to code something from scratch. Alone. You and your code. You and your progress rate. You and your bugs. You and your choices. You and your mess. Nobody to smooth…

there another side to it. coding alone making all decisions on the fly and as needed can also be very relaxing. in the big company, most of the work is getting agreement; fighting legacy code; planning transitions; making sure everybody is on the same page as they contribute...

[deleted]

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#133

Post by xaro »

dandv wrote: post #88
derekp7 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you have any other interests, such as rebuilding old cars, would that boss still have a problem with it? That is the thing I don't get, is how some companies see a big difference between regular hobbies and programing related hobbies.

[Google owns any IP you develop, even on your own time]( http://startups.stackexchange.com/questions/7822/working-leg... ), and you can't easily work on those interview-worthy side projects after you get hired.

That's kinda true, but we can request to get our copyright back on a per-project basis.

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#134

Post by walshemj »

nicolia wrote: post #53
softawre wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and would fall into one of those people where "coding is a Craft". Dude(ette), you're still in college. You don't even know what it's like to have a real engineering job yet. Do me a favor, save this post and look at it in 5 years.

I've interned at a multibillion euro company for a couple of years. I have an idea of what it's like.

Lol try having the CTO say when the billing system you look after hits its first 5 mil a month "this had better be right other wise we are both out of a job"

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#135

Post by eps »

rabidrat wrote: post #26
eps wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The range/xrange question was likely to check if you were a fraud. Having interviewed close to a hundred people in a year for a senior C dev position I can assure you that people lie like you wouldn't believe. They cheat with take-home tasks, they show others' code as their own. And that's in the system programming circles, where the level of professionalism is typically much higher than in app/web development areas.…

Just, wow. I'm sorry you have to deal with that. For my next job, I've thought about offering to work for free for a week or so as a kind of mutual trial period. I want to know what the entire office is like, what the codebase is like, what the tools are like, and what actually needs to be done. If they want to rip me off and get a week of free work, great! That's exactly the kind of thing I would want to know about…

Not for a week and not for free, but we converged to basically saying to every new hire that their 3 month probation period is their hands-on interview. You look at us, we look at you and let's err on the side of caution and assume it won't work. So far it worked well.

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#136

Post by srssays »

drvdevd wrote: post #122
srssays wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

xrange vs range is basic competence for any Python 2 programmer. They are two of the most commonly used functions and have very distinct uses. I think that was the point of the original post, however, that the question is so basic it is actually insulting - like interviewing a doctor and asking the difference between red and white blood cells.

I don't know this. And I don't care. I don't self-identify as anything near a "Python programmer" and yet I've written, modified, read, and debugged ( and put into production at times), let's say 100's of thousands of lines of Python since the late 90s. Not a ton, perhaps, but I certainly feel qualified to write it. I'm forced to maintain (or deploy) other people's Python code all the time. Personally, I would rarely…

The problem is that it's bad style to write (in Python 2.x):

    for i in range(n):
        # your code here
because it potentially allocates a lot of memory for no reason whatsoever. It's the equivalent of this C code:

    int* r = calloc(sizeof(int), n);
    for (int j = 0; j
If you don't want to deal with the distinction then what you can do is just treat range() as deprecated and always use either xrange() or list(xrange()) depending on the situation. But you had probably ought to know about the issue.

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#137

Post by drvdevd »

srssays wrote: post #136
drvdevd wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know this. And I don't care. I don't self-identify as anything near a "Python programmer" and yet I've written, modified, read, and debugged ( and put into production at times), let's say 100's of thousands of lines of Python since the late 90s. Not a ton, perhaps, but I certainly feel qualified to write it. I'm forced to maintain (or deploy) other people's Python code all the time. Personally, I would rarely…

The problem is that it's bad style to write (in Python 2.x): for i in range(n): # your code here because it potentially allocates a lot of memory for no reason whatsoever. It's the equivalent of this C code: int* r = calloc(sizeof(int), n); for (int j = 0; j If you don't want to deal with the distinction then what you can do is just treat range() as deprecated and always use either xrange() or list(xrange()) dependin…

Ok, I would certainly agree then that I ought to know about that (for Python 2.x).

And here's the thing: despite my rant, given that explanation, I'm going to have to say I respect that as a Python (2.x) interview question.

But that's because I care about performance optimization and good style in every language I use. I'm not sure that everyone else always should or that this should be a deal breaker for a python dev gig.

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#138

Post by sssilver »

eps wrote: post #10
rabidrat wrote: post #4

I want to work in a group where they appreciate that I was basically born to code. That despite my youthful features, I have still been coding for over 30 years. That I can do many tasks in an hour, that other people would take days to do. That I will spend an extra 3 hours to put a cherry on top, just because I can. I may even do it on a Saturday, because code is what I like to do with my spare time too. So when the…

The range/xrange question was likely to check if you were a fraud. Having interviewed close to a hundred people in a year for a senior C dev position I can assure you that people lie like you wouldn't believe. They cheat with take-home tasks, they show others' code as their own. And that's in the system programming circles, where the level of professionalism is typically much higher than in app/web development areas.…

I consider myself pretty good at Python, and I would need to look that up. OK yeah whatever, one's a generator. Makes sense. Why would I need to memorize something like this in order to be "legit"? Clearly if I was gonna generate a fairly big range, I'd be like "I wonder what the memory implications for this are".

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#139

Post by 0xfeba »

dandv wrote: post #88
derekp7 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you have any other interests, such as rebuilding old cars, would that boss still have a problem with it? That is the thing I don't get, is how some companies see a big difference between regular hobbies and programing related hobbies.

[Google owns any IP you develop, even on your own time]( http://startups.stackexchange.com/questions/7822/working-leg... ), and you can't easily work on those interview-worthy side projects after you get hired.

All previous companies I worked for had this clause. I've heard it's not as easy as typed to actually enforce. However, the companies I worked for stated that any personal project "relevant" to company interests belonged to them, up to 6 months after you leave.

Re: I have no side code projects to show

#140

Post by zinclozenge »

sssilver wrote: post #138
eps wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The range/xrange question was likely to check if you were a fraud. Having interviewed close to a hundred people in a year for a senior C dev position I can assure you that people lie like you wouldn't believe. They cheat with take-home tasks, they show others' code as their own. And that's in the system programming circles, where the level of professionalism is typically much higher than in app/web development areas.…

I consider myself pretty good at Python, and I would need to look that up. OK yeah whatever, one's a generator. Makes sense. Why would I need to memorize something like this in order to be "legit"? Clearly if I was gonna generate a fairly big range, I'd be like "I wonder what the memory implications for this are".

At the risk of being pedantic, but xrange returns an xrange object which implements things like __len__, __getitem__, etc
Post reply on HN