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Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

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Re: Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

#171

Post by wrp »

alex_smart wrote: post #140
alexb_ wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was going to edit this in but it quickly turned into a related rant about the state of things: if you don't want that, scroll past. The real problem is that there's no more room for the technological "middle class". We've gotten to the point where you cannot be SLIGHTLY interested in computers, want to make a quick app for yourself, or make something small to share with the world. You either have to have no interest…

I think in this particular case, the problem was just picking the wrong tool for the job. Python is the primary language used for data science these days, but it is not particularly designed for it. It is a general purpose programming language. If they had chosen something like R, their path would have been a lot smoother.

Smoother but not smooth. I once, not by choice, taught R to humanities grad students who had never programmed before. The wailing and gnashing of teeth over the course that semester was considerable, and I have stoutly refused to ever do it again. The irony of it was that they really didn't need to do anything that couldn't be done in Excel.

Re: Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

#172

Post by Tade0 »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #159
Tade0 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an interesting conversation the other day with our delivery manager and two other developers from another team, who had a wildly different than me assessment of a recent candidate. Their argument was that he didn't know this and that and how is it that I deemed him worthy? I interjected by saying that during these 30min I get to ask questions I don't have nearly the time to check one's skills throughly. And the…

I'd like to see more of this. It astounds me that software dev, historically seen as a field with and for "poor communicators", somehow believes its interviewers can do what top psychologists consider almost impossible to do. Same happens across almost every industry, but really, tech? "Cold hard logic" tech somehow became "yeah we can totally psychoanalyze someone in 30 minutes by talking"? Worse, the lack of struct…

I've found that unfortunately it's most often people at the peak of the Dunning-Kruger effect who volunteer to do interviews, so hiring decisions are ultimately made in part by those who vastly overestimate the scale of insight they can get from those relatively short conversations.

I had people get visibly angry during interviews where I was the candidate when I called them out on giving me a problem to solve, that they obviously had in their project and spent weeks on figuring out, while I was somehow supposed to do that in less than an hour.

Oddly specific interview questions are a red flag to me, because they indicate someone had a strong opinion on what's the "proper" way to solve a given problem.

Re: Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

#173

Post by lodovic »

Gigachad wrote: post #83
gernb wrote: post #31

sounds like the same experience I have with pretty much every language I'm not used to. I just want to try this C++, download, unzip, oh it's windows so .project file. Fine, redo on windows , oh it's 3 versions of vstuido old and says it wants to upgrade , okay. Hmm errors. Try to fix. Now it's getting linking error. repeat the same with xcode and any project in c, c++, objc, swift okay how about ruby? oh I have old…

I'm also sympathetic to the author but don't really see it as a problem. NPM modules are not apps on the App Store. They aren't intended to just be run by regular people quickly. The steps described in the article show someone hitting Node.js with a hammer until it gets closer to doing what they want without any understanding of what is going on. Which is fine, that's what people do often, but it isn't a failing of t…

Sure, but that is how it's sold: NodeJS and Javascript are marketed as super easy, perfect for beginners. They're not, in my opinion.

Re: Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

#174

Post by [deleted] »

lucideer wrote: post #146

The author encounters four problems trying to approach a programming task: 1) A problem common to every programming language (feature introduction/deprecation compatibility conflicts w.r.t. import/require) 2) A security issue around browser filesystem access (not-JS related at all: HTTP content-type sniffing) 3) A usability issue with the VSCode IDE (not JS related) 4) A bug in a single JS module Concludes this is al…

[deleted]

Re: Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

#175

Post by chiefalchemist »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #159
Tade0 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an interesting conversation the other day with our delivery manager and two other developers from another team, who had a wildly different than me assessment of a recent candidate. Their argument was that he didn't know this and that and how is it that I deemed him worthy? I interjected by saying that during these 30min I get to ask questions I don't have nearly the time to check one's skills throughly. And the…

I'd like to see more of this. It astounds me that software dev, historically seen as a field with and for "poor communicators", somehow believes its interviewers can do what top psychologists consider almost impossible to do. Same happens across almost every industry, but really, tech? "Cold hard logic" tech somehow became "yeah we can totally psychoanalyze someone in 30 minutes by talking"? Worse, the lack of struct…

Or perhaps the interviewers are under-experienced, under-perpared and/or under-trained?

True story: I had an interview a couple of weeks ago. I was interviewed by two people who were younger than me, and relatively less experienced than me.

My CV has a number of links to repos for various side projects and such. Best I could tell, neither of them looked, at least not more than a minute. Not a single "Your ____ repo looks ____ let's discuss a bit..." Instead I got ovetly basic questions, some of which didn't map to the role / opportunity.

Furthermore, I could only find one of them on GitHub and it was routine stuff (e.g., wedding website). Apparently, neither understood I was interviewing them as well.

I'll never get that hour of my life back.

I have a phrase:

"How you hire is who you hire."

It's sadly funny how many outfits still don't get that.

Re: Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

#176

Post by bowsamic »

alexb_ wrote: post #63

This thread is also a good read: https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1522633160483385345 Shows that a lot of people, ESPECIALLY programmers, vastly overestimate the competence of the average person when it comes to whatever they are an expert at. You may think that this person is silly - but that is tainted by your past experience of already knowing it warping what you think the baseline average knowledge level is…

The person in that twitter thread clearly has some issues beyond learning Python, their response was extremely angry, dramatic, and entitled. "Angry tears welling up" is not a reasonable response to learning anything, especially when not having a deadline and just learning it for fun. To me this reads more like a mental health breakdown live streamed on twitter than of something that actually says anything about Python. I wouldn't be comfortable interacting with them at all

Re: Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

#177

Post by aahortwwy »

wrp wrote: post #168
aahortwwy wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just isn't true, though. I have quite a few non-technical colleagues who know just enough Python to Get Shit Done. My father (a writer) taught himself R for research purposes and is productive with it. Universal Paperclips has a super-basic JavaScript codebase[0] but was a really popular game. Thing is, if you search "how to do X in Python" you're going to get a bunch of resources aimed at professionals because…

But are they building software tools that are useful and stable enough to distribute? That's the level of capability he is talking about.

That's not what the linked Twitter thread is talking about, nor is it how I interpret "make a quick app for yourself, or make something small to share with the world" or "make a quick application to accomplish a small task." Those things are eminently achievable without having to embrace the level of complexity that's so popular in professional software development.

And I actually think the level of capability you're talking about is within closer reach than most people realize. Certainly it's much easier now than it was even 10 years ago. Probably not something that a non-programmer can accomplish on day 1, but I'm not sure there's many crafts that can be learned that quickly.

Re: Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

#178

Post by Planktonne »

alexb_ wrote: post #63

This thread is also a good read: https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1522633160483385345 Shows that a lot of people, ESPECIALLY programmers, vastly overestimate the competence of the average person when it comes to whatever they are an expert at. You may think that this person is silly - but that is tainted by your past experience of already knowing it warping what you think the baseline average knowledge level is…

> a lot of people, ESPECIALLY programmers, vastly overestimate the competence of the average person

This is always true, but I think it's a slight misdiagnosis here specifically. The problem isn't over-estimating competence but under-estimating complexity.

I've watched a bunch of very smart, highly-competent people bounce off JS; that's not a fault with them but with the ever-changing and overly-complicated ecosystem.

Re: Today’s JavaScript, from an outsider’s perspective (2020)

#180

Post by psyc »

gernb wrote: post #31

sounds like the same experience I have with pretty much every language I'm not used to. I just want to try this C++, download, unzip, oh it's windows so .project file. Fine, redo on windows , oh it's 3 versions of vstuido old and says it wants to upgrade , okay. Hmm errors. Try to fix. Now it's getting linking error. repeat the same with xcode and any project in c, c++, objc, swift okay how about ruby? oh I have old…

This is yak shaving. I mainly but not exclusively encounter yak shaving when, against my better judgement, I venture into the Opensourcelands. 10x more of it there, at any rate.
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