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Programmer's Dilemma

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Re: Programmer's Dilemma

#61

Post by wyclif »

zhemao wrote: post #6
jonnathanson wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google seems to indicate the author is (was?) in Beijing, and I'm guessing that English is not his first language (reading the post seems to bear this out). It's a valid point, but I'd give him a tiny bit of leeway in this case.

You don't need to Google his name, even. He says he's in Beijing at the end of the first section. Presumably wyclif was so turned off by the spelling mistake in the title, he decided not to read any of the article itself.

I read the article, and I knew it was Chinese in origin.

Re: Programmer's Dilemma

#62

Post by vineel »

nikster wrote: post #25
vladimirralev wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with you, writing a crappy LRU will be a poor indicator of skill for a senior developer or architect. It will be just a pointless and useless piece of code. My guess is that the author asked for production-ready high quality code. I know that I've been asked many times for production quality code in interviews.

If I was the interviewer I'd just check how they go about it - do they just start typing or do they read the docs, that's a big one right there. I wouldn't expect bug free code, just a reasonable attempt, clean code, and something that generally works because a LRU cache is really simple. I disagree it's useless - if I have a senior developer, they better know how to do the basics. Otherwise what are they good for?

What's the right answer here? Should they start by typing or reading the docs?

Re: Programmer's Dilemma

#63

Post by wyclif »

zhemao wrote: post #36
wyclif wrote: post #3

I wish people would use spell check when they write headlines for blog posts.

Well, he's fixed it now. We all make mistakes. Why not point it out politely instead of being snarky about it?

I did point it out politely. Of course we all make mistakes. Whatever are you talking about?

Re: Programmer's Dilemma

#64

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #47
VexXtreme wrote: post #38

When people tell me that I should "do projects in my own free time to keep my skills sharp", it throws me into a fit of rage and makes me want to tear them a new one. Do you see any other professions having to do that in order to stay employable? Can you imagine lawyers having to practice law in their free time to "keep their skills sharp"? Can you imagine civil engineers having to draft plans for bridges and buildin…

The world of software development moves faster than almost all other fields at the moment, particularly with regards to the tools that we use. All other things being equal, the person with experience in the specific tools the organisation uses will get the job. Its just an unfortunate consequence of the industry we are in. You are of course free to not chase the bleeding edge tools in your spare time, and youll proba…

Side note: The people who chose to hack on the less-sexy Android OS are also extremely employable right now. I've had to turn down enough work this year that I could have employed three other Android programmers full-time, if I'd had them on call.

I learned Android on my own time, because I liked the idea of a Linux-based phone OS. Most of the jobs I've gotten have been EXACTLY because I've been playing with the right technology on my own time. OP is right on, and VexXtreme is making noises like a mediocre developer who has a chip on his shoulder.

Re: Programmer's Dilemma

#65

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

VexXtreme wrote: post #50
batguano wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you see any other professions having to do that in order to stay employable? Yes, most professionals do. Licensed professionals--doctors, lawyers, veterinarians, civil engineers, teachers, etc.--are usually required to get a certain number of Continuing Education Units every year to retain their professional license. The specific requirements differ from state to state.

Many professions enjoy employer paid continuing education. A totally different ballgame. Staying up every night committing to Github in hopes of landing a job is a terrible terrible thing. I know because I used to do it when I was young and stupid. The only reason why I was able to land my first dev job fresh out of college is because I had an open source project that I built in my own free time. If it hadn't been fo…

>Many professions enjoy employer paid continuing education.

Lawyers who work for a firm? Maybe. If they work for themselves, they're stuck paying the bills; continuing education is required in many fields, and yet it's not always reimbursed.

>Staying up every night committing to Github in hopes of landing a job is a terrible terrible thing.

That's never the "right" thing to do. The right thing to do is to commit to Github because you want to.

>16+ years of formal education down the drain (or 30+ years of work, if you're older), unless you adhere to some arbitrary standards by IT blogosphere keyboard jockeys.

OP wasn't talking about arbitrary keyword standards. You're tearing down a strawman of your own creation. OP was just talking about whether a developer actually could code, not filtering based on exact keywords.

To your comment: Some domains DO take way more work to learn than I would be happy hiring someone with no experience in them. I'm not talking about the fancy JavaScript framework du jour, or experience using a particular database, but actually different domains. Like kernel programming. I wouldn't touch a Java developer with 10 years of experience at enterprise Java for a project that involved kernel-level code. Or game programming. Or Android app programming, even; most Java developers would still take months to get up to speed on Android, if they ever managed adapt to the Android way of thinking at all.

Re: Programmer's Dilemma

#66

Post by hvidgaard »

gizmo686 wrote: post #44
VexXtreme wrote: post #38

When people tell me that I should "do projects in my own free time to keep my skills sharp", it throws me into a fit of rage and makes me want to tear them a new one. Do you see any other professions having to do that in order to stay employable? Can you imagine lawyers having to practice law in their free time to "keep their skills sharp"? Can you imagine civil engineers having to draft plans for bridges and buildin…

>Do you see any other professions having to do that in order to stay employable? Yes. My dad is a critical care doctor. He regularly spends some of his free time reading medical journals, or studying for the re-certification exam.

That is the difference between a good and a great professional, in any profession.

Re: Programmer's Dilemma

#67

Post by greendata »

VexXtreme wrote: post #38

When people tell me that I should "do projects in my own free time to keep my skills sharp", it throws me into a fit of rage and makes me want to tear them a new one. Do you see any other professions having to do that in order to stay employable? Can you imagine lawyers having to practice law in their free time to "keep their skills sharp"? Can you imagine civil engineers having to draft plans for bridges and buildin…

You certainly don't have to do this. But let's face it programmers have a higher wages, in part, b/c the technology is constantly changing and the supply of those who keep up is small. Since the structural barriers to most developers jobs are almost nothing (if you're good someone will give you a job and you can even work remotely for an NYC company from Bangladesh) the shifting sand of technology is what drives our wages up.

Now here's where you can win. The hiring manager or business owner wants to minimize risk. If you have 20 years experience working on mainframes in cobol, chances are you're going to be an a passable programmer with good fundamentals. Now say the hiring managers company is using rails or node.js. You know you can learn it quickly. But The manager might be nervous that you that you don't like to adjust and you won't be productive for 2-3 months while you learn. Maybe he/she thinks you're going to be complaining the whole time about how node.js sucks (while you forget how much cobol suck). You can alleviate this worry by having a few simply projects up in node.js or whatever the latest craze is + you have good fundamental experience.

So enjoy you're travels but maybe put a minimal side project up every year or so. That's my plan and I'd like to keep doing this developer thing for a while. I'd like to think, as someone who will eventually get old and have lots of experience on outdated stacks, these are some of the tactics we can use to combat ageism in engineering.

Re: Programmer's Dilemma

#68

Post by kamaal »

hvidgaard wrote: post #66
gizmo686 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Do you see any other professions having to do that in order to stay employable? Yes. My dad is a critical care doctor. He regularly spends some of his free time reading medical journals, or studying for the re-certification exam.

That is the difference between a good and a great professional, in any profession.

Doctors have to do that as a routine. Because those are the only non biased sources of knowing about a new medicine, or a treatment procedure.

Not doing that may make them bad, but doing it will not necessarily make them good.

Re: Programmer's Dilemma

#69

Post by quinnchr »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #47
VexXtreme wrote: post #38

When people tell me that I should "do projects in my own free time to keep my skills sharp", it throws me into a fit of rage and makes me want to tear them a new one. Do you see any other professions having to do that in order to stay employable? Can you imagine lawyers having to practice law in their free time to "keep their skills sharp"? Can you imagine civil engineers having to draft plans for bridges and buildin…

The world of software development moves faster than almost all other fields at the moment, particularly with regards to the tools that we use. All other things being equal, the person with experience in the specific tools the organisation uses will get the job. Its just an unfortunate consequence of the industry we are in. You are of course free to not chase the bleeding edge tools in your spare time, and youll proba…

I don't think that's true at all. According to this paper: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2909426/ The number of new medicine journal publications significantly outpaces the number of new computers science journal articles per year.

Doctors are expected to keep up to date with the most recent research as part of their jobs, and they are payed to do so by going to conferences etc... I don't think the same can be said for software development.

Re: Programmer's Dilemma

#70

Post by greendata »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #64
benjaminwootton wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world of software development moves faster than almost all other fields at the moment, particularly with regards to the tools that we use. All other things being equal, the person with experience in the specific tools the organisation uses will get the job. Its just an unfortunate consequence of the industry we are in. You are of course free to not chase the bleeding edge tools in your spare time, and youll proba…

Side note: The people who chose to hack on the less-sexy Android OS are also extremely employable right now. I've had to turn down enough work this year that I could have employed three other Android programmers full-time, if I'd had them on call. I learned Android on my own time, because I liked the idea of a Linux-based phone OS. Most of the jobs I've gotten have been EXACTLY because I've been playing with the righ…

Agreed. It can be very frustrating to see technology change so, so rapidly. What we worked hard to learn is worth a bit less each year.

But The fundamental data structures/algorithms don't change and the problem solving skills don't change. For example, get an Oculus Rift dev kit, fool around on that for a few months when the consumer version comes out you'll probably have more work than you can imagine. It's the same pattern.

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