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Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

erikmcclure.com

211–220 of 358 posts

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#211

How can this not have a huge bias in favor of gamers? Might work for them because that's the kind of culture fit they need, but I doesn't look all that generalizable for other companies.

I'm D tier programmer who would easily land a programming job if factorio was the skill metric.

Do you control trains with circuits?

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#213
post #128
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the reason why I don’t like playing factorio. I’d rather make real software and get paid or build something usable vs a game version of it. I spend a lot of time already doing it as my job, and it stresses me out in a similar way.

I like factorio because I don't have to have 17 meetings to get alignment on changing 3 lines of code. "I objectively need more electricity, so I will refactor the nuclear reactor" is the only agreement needed

That applies to any project where you work alone too.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#214

Please don't. Better, I'll remove the please and go JUST DONT FUCKING DO IT. Hiring is broken because most people hiring aren't good at it and the people working in tech are pretty much idiots (I'm focusing more on SV-startup, 5hour discussion about aeropress, put people down because they chose vim or emacs - people kinds). From 'cultural' fit interviews (who the fuck cares if you are a sikh or an atheist, whiskey dr…

As someone who is actively interviewing, this really resonates with me.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#215
post #125

I am a senior engineer and have been programming for close to two decades. I picked up Factorio a few months ago and felt overwhelmed. I couldn't finish the tutorial. I think my problem is spatial relations--it is something I've always struggled with (how to arrange furniture in a room, solve a jigsaw, etc). I don't think this is a detriment to my programming ability at all--spatial relations really never enters into…

Also a senior engineer. I tried factorio demo out for maybe 30 minutes, but hated the fact that I actually have to walk the engineer around and do menial tasks like resource collection myself. Why can't I just do stuff with mouse cursor like in most other top-down strategy games? Maybe the game changes in later stages, but the demo seemed to be full of nonsense busywork that is prevalent in survival games.

Independent of the thesis of the article, which is obviously terrible, it does get much better very quickly.

The "gather resources yourself" stage is like the first 5 minutes of the game, more so to force people to automate; I actually think it's an intentional stylistic choice to demonstrate how they are different. Like the first technologies one gets automates all of the resource collection in the game (and later tier resources can't be collected by hand). It becomes a pretty good point and click strategy game very quickly. In fact after the first couple hours you can basically play the game from the map screen if you want, using blue prints to put down large buildings and spidertrons as units to move around, without moving your main character ever again.

Like this is how the mid game looks (user designed blue prints, bots build it automatically, etc): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0k1YeMm-6o

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hire quickly and fire quickly This kind of mentality is not conducive to a well-functioning nation with people who have dependents and need stability.

It isn't a company's responsibility to create a well-functioning nation.

Says who, Milton Friedman?

Surely companies have some minimal responsibility to act ethically, and surely behaving in a way that causes social dysfunction is not ethical.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#217
post #125

I am a senior engineer and have been programming for close to two decades. I picked up Factorio a few months ago and felt overwhelmed. I couldn't finish the tutorial. I think my problem is spatial relations--it is something I've always struggled with (how to arrange furniture in a room, solve a jigsaw, etc). I don't think this is a detriment to my programming ability at all--spatial relations really never enters into…

Also a senior engineer. I tried factorio demo out for maybe 30 minutes, but hated the fact that I actually have to walk the engineer around and do menial tasks like resource collection myself. Why can't I just do stuff with mouse cursor like in most other top-down strategy games? Maybe the game changes in later stages, but the demo seemed to be full of nonsense busywork that is prevalent in survival games.

The manual resource collection aspect becomes automatic once you have a basic factory setup.

There's also a mod called long reach[1] which allows you to do most things without walking around. If you want to give the game a second chance I'd look into that.

To give an analogy with programming. The demo is more like setting up your programming project, which can be a bit tedious. While the normal game play is more like thinking about the software you're building, defining good abstractions, thinking about how to structure your code both on a macro and micro scale, keeping things DRY etc

[1] https://mods.factorio.com/mod/themightygugi_longreach

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#218
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people will just sit and watch and do nothing unless instructed... that's bad. Some people will build stuff, but with obvious efficiency flaws and "bugs"... also bad. Some people identify what needs doing and get it done effectively but without trying to be perfect... that's good. Some personalities are better suited for programming, although I think hard work can overcome anything. I remember an old blog post…

> Some personalities are better suited for programming, although I think hard work can overcome anything. I am not sure about the hard work part. Some people don't seem to think the right way for programming. I studied a one year IT masters conversion course back in the dot com boom, and chose the best / hardest course I could find. The first 3 weeks of the course was an intensive Java programming course. There was a…

I think hard work and studying is probably better than natural aptitude and no hard work.

I’ve worked with people who didn’t care at all, it was a job, but they studied and worked hard and were pretty good.

Of course, I’d rather work with someone who had both.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just got it recently and I enjoyed the heck out of it.

I've got to the "I probably need to leave my starter solar system in order to increase my DS production rate" stage, and honestly I think that's my limit. I find I can't recall where everything is (I think that can be fixed to some extent) and I'm not about to start writing documentation for a game!

>I'm not about to start writing documentation for a game!

Ha, I have a dsp.yml file for exactly that :D

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#220
post #125

I am a senior engineer and have been programming for close to two decades. I picked up Factorio a few months ago and felt overwhelmed. I couldn't finish the tutorial. I think my problem is spatial relations--it is something I've always struggled with (how to arrange furniture in a room, solve a jigsaw, etc). I don't think this is a detriment to my programming ability at all--spatial relations really never enters into…

I agree with this - having watched the trailer and played the demo, Factorio looks to me like a game of managing logistics of transporting resources around, featuring a conveyor belt system that only works in 2D.

In another game, I'd consider that an annoying micromanagement feature.

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