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What if we hired writers like we hire developers

hitesh.in

41–50 of 97 posts

Re: What if we hired writers like we hire developers

#41

This ignores different realities in how programmers and writers work. If you're hiring a writer, you cam ask to see his previous work. Unless he worked for CIA, he can point to books he's written, articles he published etc. You can then read them and that's all you need to make a decision if he's competent enough (you might still interview for cultural fit). If you're hiring a senior engineer that claims he spent las…

In addition I would tend to ask a few important questions of developers: 1) Tell me about one case where you came back to code you had previously written and decided you didn't like the style. What was the issue? Did you rewrite it to fix it? Why or why not? 2) Tell me about one case where you departed from general design best practices where it worked. What did you do? Why did it work well? 3) Tell me about your com…

These sound like the sort of thing an HR person would ask, not a developer. Commenting style. Seriously? What in all honesty do you expect someone to say, you must know you're going to get spoon fed a perfect answer just for asking such a dumb question.

Re: What if we hired writers like we hire developers

#42
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I did not get it. I think this is because, as I said, I just recently started learning to program. I started in January, but I do not commit 100% of my time to it, as I have a full time job that deals with something completely different. I know nothing about hiring developers or being a developer. Also, for the record, I just read in Hitesh's blog's comment section that this is not about hiring writers. Thanks, e…

Here's a development tip: Obviously, to dabble in programming you must learn the fundamentals-- the syntax and grammar. However, your ultimate goal is to envision a problem, device a system that solves the problem, and then gracefully describe that system using your chosen language. You can always look grammar and syntax up in the documentation. I think you will see the parallels to your current occupation.

Thank you. I will keep this in mind as I learn more about development.

Re: What if we hired writers like we hire developers

#43

It looks like it's time to recycle some electrons and post the FAQ that Hacker News readers have helped me put together with their previous thoughtful comments about hiring procedures. There are many discussions here on HN about company hiring procedures. From participants in earlier discussions I have learned about many useful references on the subject, which I have gathered here in a FAQ file. The review article by…

Are there any actually useful integrity tests?

Re: What if we hired writers like we hire developers

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are times when good writers use "bad grammar," though. More often though it's "good grammar in a non-standard dialect."

> More often though it's "good grammar in a non-standard dialect." Exactly! I wrote a blog post about this: http://kuznetsverve.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/what-is-grammat...

Actually, I am not at all convinced by Chomsky's idea of universal grammar. I think here the structuralists and post-structuralists have an important edge (post-structuralism is built on structuralism and the basic thesis is that meaning arises from the system of rules, not the individual rules). IMO Chomsky tries to move away from the basic Structuralist thesis (by Sapir and others) and move towards something else.

So for example when you look across language families you find that most of the constraints follow in an almost mathematical way from other choices. For example, once you have a language which is fairly isolated (as opposed to synthetic or polysynthetic) and doesn't use a lot of inflections, then word order becomes the only reasonable way to express relationships between words. If on the other hand, you have a synthetic language with lots of inflections, you might not need to worry about word order at all (Old English poetry for example).

The options available for polysynthetic languages are different still.

But these aren't the only constraints. Consider for example the way Austronesian languages often essentially "unbound" words by redoubling them, so in Indonesian duduk means to sit, but duduk-duduk means to sit about casually, or informally, or repeatedly (unbounding can occur with regard to time, social structures, etc). Similarly kuru means "horse" and kuru-kuru can either mean "horses" (but only if no numbers are specified) or horse-like (i.e. a sawhorse). Similarly ayam means chicken, and ayam-ayam can either mean chickens or it can mean a kind of fish that people decided is somehow chicken-like ("sea-ckicken?")... On the other hand we would never say dua kuru-kuru to mean "two horses" since that would probably mean "two sawhorses" instead. Instead it is "dua kuru" (translating word-for-word without converting structures, this means "two horse," note the singular).

Where structuralism breaks down (and where post-structuralism is important) is an area which was noted even by Sapir, one of the founders of structuralism, and this is the dynamic quality of grammar over time. Sapir's example from 1912 was the slow, gradual death of "whom" as an objective/dative form of "who." He points out that nobody really would say in every day speech "whom did you see today?" but instead "who did you see today?" and that no cadre of English teachers could reverse that trend. The idea that grammar is not static but changing over time, and hence is fluid is something which really lead to the development of post-structuralism as a general thesis in language study.

I don't think you can get from brain structures directly to grammar for the same reason you can't just treat chemistry as applied quantum physics. The added complexity, esp. combined with neuroplasticity, provides infinite possibilities regarding language structures, provided that we have some way of referencing things (breaking this down strictly into words, phrases, and sentences doesn't work for reasons Sapir points out in his surveys of Native American languages-- all languages may somehow break things down into words and sentences, but there is no natural mapping of objects to words or multiple words to phrases or sentences).

Back to non-standard dialects.... I wonder for example, how the African American Vernacular English (AAVE) phrases in Jason Mraz's song "I'm Yours" get misunderstood. Granted he shifts back and forth between AAVE and Contemporary Standard American English (CSAE) seemingly fluidly. But phrases like "before the cool done run out" have relatively specific meanings and carry a lot more meaning in AAVE while they sound just wrong in CSAE.

Re: What if we hired writers like we hire developers

#45
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition I would tend to ask a few important questions of developers: 1) Tell me about one case where you came back to code you had previously written and decided you didn't like the style. What was the issue? Did you rewrite it to fix it? Why or why not? 2) Tell me about one case where you departed from general design best practices where it worked. What did you do? Why did it work well? 3) Tell me about your com…

These sound like the sort of thing an HR person would ask, not a developer. Commenting style. Seriously? What in all honesty do you expect someone to say, you must know you're going to get spoon fed a perfect answer just for asking such a dumb question.

Why do you say that? As a developer the comments are talking to me, not to the HR department and not to the computer. I want to know someone has thought about this area regarding the way bad comments get in the way of collaboration and the way good comments facilitate it.

The point is that answers to these questions show the extent of introspection a programmer has regarding code. I am looking for thoughtful answers, not right answers. If you think they are stupid questions, I don't want to put you in charge of doing the basic creation of new frameworks.

Edit: One really good follow-up question is something like, 'So you are reading code and you see a comment that says "This is broken." Is that a good comment or a bad one? Why?' It's a good question because right or wrong isn't in "good" or "bad" but rather the reasons they might give.

Edit2: If it's such an easy question what's your answer? ;-)

Re: What if we hired writers like we hire developers

#47
As a writer, some of this strikes me as dumb. There are a lot of people who aren't "writers" that I'd be glad to hire. Why would you grill someone on the rules in the Elements of Style? They can look that sort of thing up. If anything, I'd be more interested to see if they absorbed the real lessons in the Elements of Style. (Hint: Not the rules.) Also:

"We have found that we are able to hire great writer from this process, who are able to create award winning content, whether it is a short article or a book."

Hire a copy editor.

Re: What if we hired writers like we hire developers

#48
post #33

> Good spellings and knowledge of grammar rules does not indicate a good writer, and there are tools (spelling/grammar check) and (editorial) processes to take care of that. Good grammar doesn't indicate a good writer, but bad grammar does indicate a bad one[1]. (Good grammar meaning, in this case, an ear for language. Good writers avoid grammatical errors because grammatical errors sound wrong , like an off-pitch no…

"Good grammar doesn't indicate a good writer, but bad grammar does indicate a bad one" that is not true at all - not knowing grammar well doesn't mean the writer has nothing good or creative, or worthwhile to say (or write about). Grammar is just a technicality to be overcome. Creative writing (as opposed to technical writing), is something that is not measured by the knowledge of the language, but by the knowledge o…

Having something good, creative or worthwhile to say and saying it well are two different things. I understand the phrse "good writer" to mean the latter. Too often have I come across excellent insights buried like diamonds in a dungheap in ugly, tortuous prose. This runs the great risk of these insights being lost or misinterpreted. The converse is possible too, of course; utter nonsense put beautifully.

Re: What if we hired writers like we hire developers

#49

As a writer, some of this strikes me as dumb. There are a lot of people who aren't "writers" that I'd be glad to hire. Why would you grill someone on the rules in the Elements of Style? They can look that sort of thing up. If anything, I'd be more interested to see if they absorbed the real lessons in the Elements of Style. (Hint: Not the rules.) Also: "We have found that we are able to hire great writer from this pr…

You should read the full article.. the hiring writers bit is just a parody.

Re: What if we hired writers like we hire developers

#50
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your premise but your post is a case in point. There are as many words inside parenthesis as outside making it incredibly confusing to read. Even worse, you have a reference '[2]' nested inside parenthesis. Using parenthesis like this indicates that it should be either a footnote or worded differently. Nesting it just makes my brain shut off. I fall victim to using parenthesis in this manor myself quite…

Indeed. But in this manor is the median the messuage? (Despite what my spell check says, there are no misspellings there. A dictionary might be useful though ;-) Apologies at picking on typos and showing off knowledge of obscure words.)

the cute thing is, it even makes sense
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