I once failed a job interview because the Fortran complier they used handled errors differently than the one I was used to, so they assumed I didn't know what I was talking about.
They don't even know the fundamentals
251–260 of 323 posts
Re: They don't even know the fundamentals
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I totally fail to parse any written explanation of liskov substitution principle Off the top of my head, "all child classes should be usable interchangeably when dealing with an interface/base class". I guess that's too imprecise to qualify as "written explanation"?
This doesn’t sound correct to me. The original statement is, Let ϕ(x) be a property provable about objects x of type T. Then ϕ(y) should be true for objects y of type S where S is a subtype of T. Here, objects of a base class are replaced with objects of derived classes.
> This doesn’t sound correct to me.
Yet the GP says exactly the same thing as you said. He just ignored that the property belongs to the base class.
Re: They don't even know the fundamentals
#253This promulgation and advocacy of laziness and know-nothing-ism is frightening and all too commonplace nowadays. The ACID example was a bad one, granted, but everyone seems to be giving up after identifying that. I also think that this post is not about interviewing. I am much more concerned with the line the author takes about knowing how a digital computer work is even necessary. How have we arrived at this point?…
I agree, as long as the attempt at expertise is not at the expense of getting stuff done. I have met people who have a great grasp of foundational principles and it shows. I have met other people who take so long trying to understand something before they use it, they don't get their work done.
You are so right about the pursuit of excellence being important but the industry is still way too fragmented. If a Doctor said they don't really need to know stuff, they would work it out as they went along, they wouldn't work for long. In Software Engineering, we are still treated (and act!) like some basic trade where the risks are low enough not to care.
Re: They don't even know the fundamentals
#254I think this discussion contrasts two opposite types of "fundamentals".
Some "fundamentals" sit at the base of a knowledge pyramid. If an OS developer doesn't know pointers, there's no easy fix for that. You want someone with years of experience building things on top of pointers.
But other "fundamentals" are more like things that are used very commonly and thus one expects that experts would be familiar with them, but they sit on top of knowledge pyramids. It's not hard for experts to pick them up.
I think this lens can help clarify a lot of these discussions!
Re: They don't even know the fundamentals
#255I think the example is very poor, it sounds like a atraw man argument.
Asking about fundamentals in an interview is, surely, a given? I don't necessarily need everyone to know everything about everything but if I met a dev who didn't know some software principles or a DBA who couldn't explain ACID to at least a basic level, why would I want to employ them? Because they tell me that they just work it out when necessary?
I've cleaned up too much code from people who think "just use an array" or searching through a massive list because they don't know how dictionaries work.
The interview questions sound more than reasonable and then the OP tries to destroy this by saying that not everyone knows all the details of everything which is not what most people would call questions on fundamentals.
Re: They don't even know the fundamentals
#256> There is another fundamental that is ignored by a lot of computer users. I think everyone who spends a lot of time behind a computer should learn how to touch type, since typing is still the main way of interacting with your computer. I sort of agree, but anyone typing out code at 120WPM isn't programming, they're writing. Programming is an intellectual activity, not a physical one so learning to touch type is wort…
There's also an argument here about having (and signalling) respect for one's peers, craft and tools. The keyboard is a tool. To me, it feels disrespectful for a person to expect these high wages when they don't even make the moderate effort involved in learning to use this tool efficiently. In my experience, this usually signals that a person isn't actually interested in continuously improving, feels overly entitled…
But how do you know if someone has dyslexia or is just not making an effort? Or has wrist, shoulder, whatever problems? Unless the typing is hurting their output, who cares? And at that point it is not the typing speed that is the problem, but that their output is low.
Re: They don't even know the fundamentals
#257My company went public and was acquired, all while doing basic database shit hilariously wrong and just strapping in memory caches everywhere instead of using indexes.
We have two caches and we really just needed to use the dB in a not criminally bad way.
But the market didn't care and the people who did the abuse are now director or architects or manager level engineers at other (good) companies.
There's some reality that knowing this stuff matters but it honestly doesn't for a huge number of tech startups, at least in this market.
Re: They don't even know the fundamentals
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
People who make this comment, I generally don't believe you, or don't believe you have done any programming. If I put a gun to your head and give you an hour, you can't make a node that points to two other nodes of the same type? If you really can't, you should get familiar with how data can point to other data, it is fundamental and done all the time.
There’s more than making a node the points to other nodes. That’s not what makes a binary tree a binary tree.
I mean… it literally is all there is to it
Re: They don't even know the fundamentals
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a computer science degree from 10 years ago and I couldn't tell you how to implement one. I vaguely know the general principles but I'd have to sit down and start from scratch on how to implement one. Why? The only time I knowingly used them is with database indices. For everything else I do, they are an unnecessary implementation detail. It doesn't matter what Ruby's Set uses.
People who make this comment, I generally don't believe you, or don't believe you have done any programming. If I put a gun to your head and give you an hour, you can't make a node that points to two other nodes of the same type? If you really can't, you should get familiar with how data can point to other data, it is fundamental and done all the time.
> If I put a gun to your head and give you an hour, you can't make a node that points to two other nodes of the same type?
It's easy to make an imbalanced binary tree.
I once decided that building a binary tree based only on a friend's explanation of how they worked; it seemed like it would be a good learning exercise for myself (I don't have a CS degree). It was like 10 minutes of coding to get it minimally working & tested, but then I had to work out all of the different rotations to make it a balanced binary tree (I don't know that an imbalanced binary tree is ever actually useful, as it could just work out to be a slower linked-list in the worst case scenario).
I did it once, took me a little while, but I don't know that I could do it again without having to reexamine all of the different cases that result in imbalance and the rotations that respond to each.
Re: They don't even know the fundamentals
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've worked at visual effects studios working on feature films, and in that industry (where proprietary workflows rule) there is always an education department. Even if one used to work there, being gone for a year is enough to make one useless as the workflows change radically, VFX technologies move fast. When I spent time consulting at web shops, I was dismayed at the undocumented and loose workflows, plus no proce…
>I get the sense the web is the worse of modern tech exploitation work practices. Web work is exploitative because... the workflow is undocumented? If it pays well, who cares?
Undocumented is much worse than your comment seems to realize. Wait until you are in a situation when the only people that know a mission critical procedure quit or die. This can cause entire large companies to crumble, as well as the reason so much confusion exists in development, and is also a reason the industry relies on leet code testing - if you don't know something before being hired, nobody can explain it there because they are all fixing fires or on not-really-understanding auto-pilot.