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

“This project will only take 2 hours”

web.eecs.utk.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 279 posts

Re: “This project will only take 2 hours”

#131

Post by Aachen »

DeathArrow wrote: post #49
wvenable wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone can write a rough command line tool that monitors the clipboard and prints to stdout. There's a good chance that this will solve 95% of all needs. Most of the features suggested in the article beyond the original premise are unnecessary.

>There's a good chance that this will solve 95% of all needs. Most of the features suggested in the article beyond the original premise are unnecessary. The teacher is the client. The client is the one who will better estimate what is necessary or not. If you own a company and someone wants to contract you for work, you start explaining how what the client says it needs is not necessary and how he can manage with les…

Given the circumstances it seems reasonable to assume a programming teacher can use a program without it being foolproof enough that my mom can use it. Further, if they wanted more features (usability-wise or otherwise), they are also knowledgeable enough to ask for them, unlike an average user. Still, the students even asked clarifying questions, the author wrote. And yet they came up with a 2-hour estimate.

Of course nobody is going to come to a consultancy firm to ask for a command line utility that technically solves the problem. That's an entirely different situation you're describing.

Re: “This project will only take 2 hours”

#132

Post by brailsafe »

tcmart14 wrote: post #126
jiggawatts wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vaguely remember a rant some famous Linux developer went on about how setting up printing in Linux requires a dozen parameters, half of which are arcane nonsense that the printer manufacturer themselves probably doesn't know how to set up correctly. Meanwhile, on an Apple or Windows computer it can be literally just plug and print. The difference is that hiding those arcane input parameters takes work , and a lot o…

I have not experience this fool-proof plug and play on windows or mac os. I just last year replaced a printer because it wasn't working with my wife's Macbook Pro, it worked one day and just dropped of the face of the earth the next (was able to print over USB from my linux laptop still). The printers were I work constantly have issues working with the windows PCs. Moral of the story, printers are a necessary evil an…

Printers were the bane of my existence when I was responsible for maintaining a small business's computer stuff. They all ran shitty Windows PCs with varying versions. One day one of the accountant's computers started crashing on boot, and after a hell of a long time, I found that some Epson printer driver had set a registry key that didn't revert upon uninstallation, and that crippled the machine.

I wonder if in your case, your old printer relied on either 32-bit kernel extensions (I don't know if that's a thing), or if it relied on one of the deprecated Kernel Programming Interfaces such as IOUSBFamily. I also wonder if a printer driver falls into a category of deprecated extensions that are silently reported by the OS, because most do pop up an alert of some kind.

https://developer.apple.com/support/kernel-extensions/

Re: “This project will only take 2 hours”

#133

Post by gverrilla »

rak1507 wrote: post #128
gverrilla wrote: post #97

A good friend was working in a scientific model for controlling weeds on farms. He couldn't code so he asked me to make it into a program: "it is very simple, only 8 steps at most". The 8 steps turned out to be a 2000 lines code after 6 months of work. Later he changed the model a few times and added a few new steps. We could only finish the prototype 16 months after starting, and after a few rewrites, with 3500 line…

Just curious - why would you use python if you don't know it?

I did a teamtreehouse or codeacademy course on Python maybe 6 or 7 years ago, but that was all - not even a single project. Mainly my programming experience existed because when I was a teenager I would create scripts for ultima online using EUO [0] and a few times Simba[1]. Also I managed an ecommerce operation for a few years, so I dealt with coders and eventually code.

Actually, I started this project in VBA after my partner insisted on it because he had those sheets with all the parameters for the model already in excel, and also a GUI he had created for the input. I accepted because I had taken a course on it @ uni, but soon felt the need for an easier way to program, and that's when I decided to go to Python.

0: http://www.easyuo.com/ 1: https://wizzup.org/simba/

Re: “This project will only take 2 hours”

#134

Post by rightbyte »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #96
fumblebee wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The take-home assignment seems to me a slightly broken system; it's easily gameable because there's zero supervision. Let's say there's two candidates for a position who are both asked to complete the take-home assignment, Candidate A and Candidate B. Candidate A is the superior candidate and spends only two hours on the task (as requested), and Candidate B spends 2 days. Candidate B submits the better assignment and…

Sounds like there may be a niche for some kind of industry standard automated logging system. Nothing complicated - shouldn't take too long.

Are you joking? Should candidates install spyware?

Re: “This project will only take 2 hours”

#135

Post by wongarsu »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #106
sildur wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only accept paired assignments. If you are going to use my time, the least you can do is offer an equal amount of time on your side.

"Thank you for your time, we will keep you in mind. Next!" Point of programming assignment is to see if you can actually write code. No one is waiting for perfect implementation, just working code that fills the spec, documentation, and tests.

"here's a computer, please implement a function in $languageOnYouCV that receives two words and returns true if they are anagrams of each other, false otherwise, if time permits add some unit tests" seems to fulfill that need just as well, and should be quick enough that being in the room or not is more about what makes the candidate more comfortable and gives the most insight for the interviewer.

Re: “This project will only take 2 hours”

#136

Post by agent327 »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #114
agent327 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... you select for people that can get home within two hours and still have enough time left over for the assignment, as well as people that are willing to do the assignment in the parking lot?

Oh, we don't even meet face to face before you write code. We setup a time where you have X hours open and then we send you an email with couple different assignments to choose from. Then we expect to have your code email back to us within X hours.

As a potential employee I would never agree to this. If you want me to put in two hours, I do expect to have progressed further into the interview than "you are one of 400 candidates, here's your test!".

Re: “This project will only take 2 hours”

#137

Post by bosie »

agent327 wrote: post #111
sildur wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only accept paired assignments. If you are going to use my time, the least you can do is offer an equal amount of time on your side.

How does this work? Who is the other party (someone from the company?) and what do they contribute?

They contribute the evaluation and time-boxing

Re: “This project will only take 2 hours”

#138

Post by dkdbejwi383 »

toyg wrote: post #115
AstralStorm wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't quite do this most of the time due to privacy concerns. Leaking random URL-looking text to the network is a big no.

So now we have to ask for user consent (installation time? first run?) and respond accordingly, adding another piece of UI... but it will only take an hour, right...?

You probably also want a setting to detect slow networks and disable it there in case the user is tethering etc.

Re: “This project will only take 2 hours”

#139

Post by FemmeAndroid »

AstralStorm wrote: post #110
DeathArrow wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can write an OS in just 2 hours. Just a few lines of code which can be booted straight on the hardware an sit there doing nothing. It is an OS? It is. It is useful? It is not.

I want to see that done on modern x86-64. Make a livestream or something!

You might enjoy this series of blog posts. I went through them last year and learned a lot!

https://os.phil-opp.com/

Re: “This project will only take 2 hours”

#140

Post by nnoitra »

jstx1 wrote: post #66

Reminds me of how some companies give take-home assignments to job candidates. > Here's a task that takes a day to do sloppily and at least two days for you to show your best work. We want to be respectful of your time so please don't spend more than 2 hours on it.

Yup, the worst aspect of it isn't that it takes a long time to make it work right but the feeling of imposter syndrome and the fear of expectations if one manages to get in.

Like, if you expect me to write 1K lines of code in 2 hours as I read documentation, debug, test it - then god knows what the expectations are at a full day at work.

Post reply on HN