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

Pure CSS FizzBuzz

joseph.mx

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 62 posts

Re: Pure CSS FizzBuzz

#51

Post by dragonwriter »

workingandtired wrote: post #44
nawitus wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the job posting clearly communicated that the applicant should at least have a basic grasp of JavaScript. On a related note, it's weird that the author claims to have experience with Ember/Angular.js or other similar frameworks without being able to write the FizzBuzz.

To be fair, I was a self taught programmer (albeit PHP) and I was on my second or third programming job before I came across a modulus in the wild. It's really simple basic programming theory, but not super common in live web development.

> To be fair, I was a self taught programmer (albeit PHP) and I was on my second or third programming job before I came across a modulus in the wild.

Knowing of an existing modulus operator/function isn't necessary to solve FizzBuzz; there's a fairly simple solution with just add/increment, assignment, and conditional logic without modulus.

Re: Pure CSS FizzBuzz

#52

Post by [deleted] »

efbbbf wrote: post #50
workingandtired wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I was a self taught programmer (albeit PHP) and I was on my second or third programming job before I came across a modulus in the wild. It's really simple basic programming theory, but not super common in live web development.

That's not being fair. That's your own problem. I'm also a self-taught programmer, but I don't feel like I need to compare myself to her. The point is that she didn't fit the requirements of the job. As a result, she did not get the job. That's pretty much end of story. If the job requires her to be "experienced with JS", that means that they want her to know the language. And it's not just modulo. She didn't know ho…

[deleted]

Re: Pure CSS FizzBuzz

#53

Post by workingandtired »

efbbbf wrote: post #50
workingandtired wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I was a self taught programmer (albeit PHP) and I was on my second or third programming job before I came across a modulus in the wild. It's really simple basic programming theory, but not super common in live web development.

That's not being fair. That's your own problem. I'm also a self-taught programmer, but I don't feel like I need to compare myself to her. The point is that she didn't fit the requirements of the job. As a result, she did not get the job. That's pretty much end of story. If the job requires her to be "experienced with JS", that means that they want her to know the language. And it's not just modulo. She didn't know ho…

Yeah, I guess I didn't quite make my point clear. All I meant was that it's easy to work inside frameworks without truely understanding the language.

I wasn't "comparing" myself to her. I was just explaining how it could happen. I agree that she wasn't qualified for the job and didn't deserve to get it. But I'd be willing to guess that if they job had a line like "This job will be 75% programming, 25% ui/ux design", she wouldn't have applied. I feel like she was looking for a design job but didn't find out otherwise until the middle of the interview.

Re: Pure CSS FizzBuzz

#54

Post by workingandtired »

dragonwriter wrote: post #51
workingandtired wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I was a self taught programmer (albeit PHP) and I was on my second or third programming job before I came across a modulus in the wild. It's really simple basic programming theory, but not super common in live web development.

> To be fair, I was a self taught programmer (albeit PHP) and I was on my second or third programming job before I came across a modulus in the wild. Knowing of an existing modulus operator/function isn't necessary to solve FizzBuzz; there's a fairly simple solution with just add/increment, assignment, and conditional logic without modulus.

Yeah, you're right about that. I was just trying to explain how you can work in an environment and make websites, but not necessarily grasp a full understanding of the language you're working in.

But my feeling from the post was that she is first and foremost a UI/UX designer, with some supplemental jquery/js knowledge. She applied for the job thinking it was a fit, but didn't find out otherwise until the middle of the interview. She wasn't qualified for what they were looking for, but I can empathize with the ambiguity in some of the job listings requirements.

Re: Pure CSS FizzBuzz

#55

Post by dragonwriter »

workingandtired wrote: post #46
dragonwriter wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A UI/UX Designer/Engineer does not inherently require programming. I would argue that UI/UX Designer might not, but UI/UX Engineer inherently does. > But if they're looking for someone to program, it should be outlined in the responsibilities. It was. > Knowing "HTML/CSS/JS" is different than building an entire application (just an example). FizzBuzz doesn't test ability to "build an entire application". It tests f…

Like I mentioned below, as a self taught web programmer, it was years before I came across a modulus in a real-world situation. I feel like it's understandable to not have a 100% grasp on all the basics and still produce stuff. I think the more damning thing in her case is her questioning the question and seemingly not giving it a thorough effort. Again, just listing "HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript." by itself as a minimum…

> Like I mentioned below, as a self taught web programmer, it was years before I came across a modulus in a real-world situation.

So? Like I mentioned in response to that, modulus isn't necessary for FizzBuzz.

> Again, just listing "HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript." by itself as a minimum qualification doesn't specify what level of knowledge is expected of you.

FizzBuzz doesn't require much depth of knowledge in the target programming language. If you are can handle assignment, addition, conditional logic, and any one of iteration, jumping, or recursion (note that some language may not support all three of those, so which are available depends on language), you can do FizzBuzz.

What FizzBuzz does require (assuming you haven't already studied it and memorized a solution in the language given) is being able to think through a dirt simple problem and apply a programming language to it. It identifies people with minimal programming skills as distinct from those who are limited to cargo cult copypasta (well, again, except that memorization means it can produce false positives.)

Re: Pure CSS FizzBuzz

#56

Post by carlosrg »

dkersten wrote: post #49
carlosrg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like a story of someone that applied for a job that asks for Javascript skills without knowing Javascript and then blamed the company, and made a blog post/rant about it, because they hired someone else that probably fits that particular position better.

I thought so too at first (and its not like FizzBuzz is hard), but if you read the post you'll see the job advert was for design, only listing JS as "HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript" after talking about design up until then (and then only listing further JS stuff as nice to haves ). The person made clear that they can do all the design stuff and can use JS to add basic interaction to the frontend. The job post didn't ask for…

The job advert asked for someone that knows Javscript. This person doesn't know JavaScript. The person that got the job probably knew Javascript.

I don't think this deserves a blog post ranting against that company because they asked you a Javascript question in, I repeat, a job listing that specifically asked for Javascript knowledge.

Re: Pure CSS FizzBuzz

#57

Post by workingandtired »

dragonwriter wrote: post #55
workingandtired wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I mentioned below, as a self taught web programmer, it was years before I came across a modulus in a real-world situation. I feel like it's understandable to not have a 100% grasp on all the basics and still produce stuff. I think the more damning thing in her case is her questioning the question and seemingly not giving it a thorough effort. Again, just listing "HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript." by itself as a minimum…

> Like I mentioned below, as a self taught web programmer, it was years before I came across a modulus in a real-world situation. So? Like I mentioned in response to that, modulus isn't necessary for FizzBuzz. > Again, just listing "HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript." by itself as a minimum qualification doesn't specify what level of knowledge is expected of you. FizzBuzz doesn't require much depth of knowledge in the target p…

Yeah, you're right. FizzBuzz does test a programmers mindset and it's pretty clear she didn't meet those expectations. I was focusing on a tiny aspect of it.

The main point I was trying to get at is that it doesn't seem to me like she identifies as a programmer. She's a UI/UX designer with a little bit of code experience. IMO, the whole point of it wasn't that she was upset that she didn't get the job or what they asked her. It was simply that based on the description, she went in thinking the primary focus was mockups, design and user testing rather than programming. Had the post been more clear about their expectations for the position, she wouldn't have tried for it.

Re: Pure CSS FizzBuzz

#58

Post by kyllo »

cporios wrote: post #29
kyllo wrote: post #25

Does this mean that CSS is now Turing-complete, or does it just mean that Turing-completeness is not required to implement FizzBuzz?

Turing completeness is not required to implement FizzBuzz. But CSS + HTML are turing complete since Rule 110 can be implemented in pure CSS + HTML. EDIT: I'm not entirely right. Here's a good answer: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2497146/is-css-turing-com...

OK, and I see the Pure CSS Fizzbuzz is likewise not Turing complete, because it would still require a Javascript client to append divs to the document in a loop (or when called) in order to pump the automaton.
Post reply on HN