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Drowning in a C of Interviews

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Re: Drowning in a C of Interviews

#11

Post by alexgartrell »

jedsmith wrote: post #8
tedunangst wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It more or less is at Fog Creek. I am not unfamiliar with the usage of C outside of Fog Creek.

They have their own compiler for a custom VBScript derivative. If there's no C anywhere in it, I'd be surprised, but I am operating without knowledge of its implementation or output. Edit: So what did I do wrong here? I admitted that I'm shooting in the dark, admitted that I'd be surprised if my hypothesis was true, and had absolutely no knowledge of who the person I'm replying to is. It's certainly not on his profil…

Ted worked at fog creek until very recently. He's also an OpenBSD contribiuter. I'm inclined to agree with his opinions regarding the relative value of C at fog creek.

I did an internship there but didnt ever look directly at wasabi. I know that it's not really in active development (only FogBugz even uses it) though so even if K&R hacked it up themselves, I'd argue it's not really important there anymore.

Re: Drowning in a C of Interviews

#12

Post by tom_b »

Hmmmm. Given a language X that is not used in actual development in an organization, at what point does interviewing with whiteboard coding in X become just another credential?

I like (FTA): "So I’ve picked a question that forces candidates to design a data structure" . . . "I’ll continue conducting my interviews in the language of the candidate’s choice"

As an even more general question to hackers here, what would impress you more? A candidate who comes in, whiteboards out an algorithm and data structure in C to solve a problem, or a candidate solves the same problem in Clojure?

Particularly if your org uses neither of those two languages :-) Of course, you have to grok the different paradigms you might use in both languages or you'll probably be unable to make a decent judgment.

Re: Drowning in a C of Interviews

#13

Post by rockhymas »

tedunangst wrote: post #3

I really did like getting interviewed in C. :) But I was also confident using it. It was appealing knowing that interviews were conducted in a language that wasn't really being used. Lots of companies claim they will hire smart people regardless of skills, but then you show up to interview and the guy across the table really expects you to know python and is flabbergasted that you bothered applying without it. I felt…

I would agree. Though C is far from useless, it really isn't used here at the Creek. Which was a double bonus for me, since after 6 years immersed in C and C++ I could find a job that let me do something new but that I felt very comfortable interviewing for. That said, I really don't believe you need lots of C experience to do well in our interviews.

My full response to Ben is at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2442696.

Re: Drowning in a C of Interviews

#14

Post by gecko »

jedsmith wrote: post #8
tedunangst wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It more or less is at Fog Creek. I am not unfamiliar with the usage of C outside of Fog Creek.

They have their own compiler for a custom VBScript derivative. If there's no C anywhere in it, I'd be surprised, but I am operating without knowledge of its implementation or output. Edit: So what did I do wrong here? I admitted that I'm shooting in the dark, admitted that I'd be surprised if my hypothesis was true, and had absolutely no knowledge of who the person I'm replying to is. It's certainly not on his profil…

There's no C in Wasabi; it's pure C#. That said, keep in mind that Wasabi's only purpose in life is as a compatibility shim so that we weren't forced to rewrite FogBugz from scratch. No products other than FogBugz will ever be written in the language. Kiln, for example, is C#/Python/JavaScript.

Re: Drowning in a C of Interviews

#15

Post by adestefan »

thrawea wrote: post #10

It's a bit hard for me to believe that there are programmers, who dont understand Pointers! Though I am still in school, I feel everyone should understand how Memory works. My assumption is that everyone should at least know about: 1. Pointers and their physical meaning 2. Difference between Process specific virtual memory and physical memory 3. Difference between Static, Stack and Heap Memory. 4. Also it is importan…

It's not really that shocking. Most people don't program in a language with manual memory allocation anymore.

I would guess that people might know 1 when they think about it some, but really don't know anything about the rest.

Re: Drowning in a C of Interviews

#16

Post by cygwin98 »

thrawea wrote: post #10

It's a bit hard for me to believe that there are programmers, who dont understand Pointers! Though I am still in school, I feel everyone should understand how Memory works. My assumption is that everyone should at least know about: 1. Pointers and their physical meaning 2. Difference between Process specific virtual memory and physical memory 3. Difference between Static, Stack and Heap Memory. 4. Also it is importan…

I believe there is a difference between knowing how memory and pointers work and being proficient at pointer manipulation in C.

If you enforce such kind of interviews in C, you will miss lots of great FP programmers. Maybe you don't care anyway.

Re: Drowning in a C of Interviews

#17

Post by tedunangst »

tom_b wrote: post #12

Hmmmm. Given a language X that is not used in actual development in an organization, at what point does interviewing with whiteboard coding in X become just another credential? I like (FTA): "So I’ve picked a question that forces candidates to design a data structure" . . . "I’ll continue conducting my interviews in the language of the candidate’s choice" As an even more general question to hackers here, what would i…

My tactic interviewing people for a sysadmin position was to allow them to use any language they knew. For the most part it went well. Even someone who doesn't know a thing about programming can generally pick up how the interview is going from the candidate's reactions. But occasionally someone would quite confidently assert some code would do something I didn't think it did, but I didn't really have the powershell chops to call them on it. For a sysadmin position, there was no one language we could standardize on, and the interview was designed more to test ability to use one's tools, not to program, so it was the best we could do. We weren't going to make every candidate learn perl/python/ruby just to apply.

A dev candidate who solves a problem in clojure may be impressive, but since I'm less qualified to judge, I will be less confident hiring them. Your best chance to get hired is to convince me that you are better than everyone else, and the best way to do that is to do something impressive that I can compare to everyone else.

I've also had people go from passing to failing because they overreached. More than one candidate successfully produced a correct C solution and then sunk their own battleship by volunteering a completely wrong soliloquy on heap vs stack memory. "Noone knows you're stupid until you open your mouth." Do NOT use clojure if you're betting the interviewer won't catch your mistakes.

Re: Drowning in a C of Interviews

#18

Post by droz »

Really depends on your situation, but do your interviews in pseudo code. Evaluate their ability to translate your requirements into a logical set of events that will satisfy your requirements.

Re: Drowning in a C of Interviews

#19

Post by burgerbrain »

adestefan wrote: post #15
thrawea wrote: post #10

It's a bit hard for me to believe that there are programmers, who dont understand Pointers! Though I am still in school, I feel everyone should understand how Memory works. My assumption is that everyone should at least know about: 1. Pointers and their physical meaning 2. Difference between Process specific virtual memory and physical memory 3. Difference between Static, Stack and Heap Memory. 4. Also it is importan…

It's not really that shocking. Most people don't program in a language with manual memory allocation anymore. I would guess that people might know 1 when they think about it some, but really don't know anything about the rest.

Even if they don't personally use languages that require this knowledge on a regular basis, the idea that someone could come through a CS education and not know it is pretty stunning.

Re: Drowning in a C of Interviews

#20

Post by fractallyte »

jedsmith wrote: post #8
tedunangst wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It more or less is at Fog Creek. I am not unfamiliar with the usage of C outside of Fog Creek.

They have their own compiler for a custom VBScript derivative. If there's no C anywhere in it, I'd be surprised, but I am operating without knowledge of its implementation or output. Edit: So what did I do wrong here? I admitted that I'm shooting in the dark, admitted that I'd be surprised if my hypothesis was true, and had absolutely no knowledge of who the person I'm replying to is. It's certainly not on his profil…

A 'random drive-by downvoter' struck again... Not much thought involved in the action, and certainly nothing to contribute to the discussion. They feel good downvoting such an obvious 'troll', and then vanish into the ether.
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