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Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

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Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#171

Post by ericol »

toyg wrote: post #156
ericol wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just hit "i" to be dropped into insert mode, then just navigate with the arrows and use backspace like in any other editor. Yeah, no. Let me call bullshit on you calling bullshit. I've been working as a mediocre programmer at the same company for the last 10 years. when I landed this job, I had never ever even heard of vi. I was "gently" introduced to it by my boss, and eventually got to kind of get used to a basic…

I had your same problem for years (I use vi extremely sparingly) and the answer is “a” - which means “append”: it will go to the end of the line and leave you in insert mode after the last character. Found out when I was looking for something else, and improved my quality of life quite a bit. (I still hate distributions where arrow keys in insert mode don’t work like any reasonable human would expect, but they are th…

Yep, well thanks for that. But imaging having a job interview, you are forced to use an editor you never in your life used and that _doesn't behave as a normal editor_ and you can't even inser a line _normally_.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#172

Post by trickstra »

je42 wrote: post #100
RealDinosaur wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've written tests before, but there ain't no way I'm writing unit tests for a throw away coding exercise that used 4 hours of my time already.

usually for a coding challenge i include in the instructions to add unittests. ;) since I consider the ability to write well designed unittests as crucial.

Just writing a unit test for an existing code would actually tell a lot more about the applicant's skills than a coding interview with vi. Or a task like "here is 100 lines of code, there is a bug there, show me how would you look for it". I wish more companies were doing these kind of coding tasks. Instead, all we get where I come from is "write a simple todo list application in your free time".

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#173

Post by panpanna »

yoz-y wrote: post #169
panpanna wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, a good engineer is always curious and as such has gathered a lot of knowledge about other fields. Maybe he is a unix server admin that writes iOS app on his own time just for fun? Maybe he is a data scientist that also enjoys UI design? A bad engineer is happy that he has learned framework X and doesn't feel he needs to learn anything else. Putting the Linux admin candidate in front of an xcode window i…

I agree, but my point is that today there are so many fields to be curious about that knowledge or not of vi is just one of them. There is no time to know about everything. > Putting the Linux admin candidate in front of an xcode window is a quick and to find out where he stands. If he looks totally lost, he is definitely a 10x guy. They are or they are not? Judging by the previous paragraph this sentence seems odd.

Sorry, I meant "is definitely not"

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#174

Post by detaro »

prepend wrote: post #163
detaro wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is "unix server administration in an environment that doesn't have other options" such a critical skill for all engineers? Or why else is vim experience required? Sure, many are going to have it, but it doesn't mean anything in itself.

I don’t consider vi to be a system admin tool only. While I don’t think vi is a showstopper, it would certainly be curious how a mid to senior engineer wouldn’t know how to use insert and quit in vi. This would make me think that a Windows only background never even meant connecting to a shell and having to view a file. I’ve experienced lots of app developers who only use an IDE and don’t know how code is deployed or…

The comment I replied to said that a "really good" engineer has to know vi, that's what I was responding to, not "nearly all good engineers in my specific area will know vi", which is a lot more reasonable.

For a Linux desktop user, including devs, I wouldn't consider not knowing vi to be that odd, given that other editors commonly ship or are a single install command away. For someone not working on Linux, it's even less expected.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#175

Post by bmn__ »

thiht wrote: post #71
fit2rule wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I interview people, and they get stuck on a programming problem like this, I tell them "it is completely acceptable for you to show me your Google fu to overcome this problem". Google-fu is just as important a skill as knowing how to exit vi.

What's a fu?

http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/F/suffix-fu.html

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#176

Post by GordonS »

ex_amazon_sde wrote: post #92
GordonS wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's such a simple task, but in reality it's a fantastic way to weed out those that really don't have a clue what they're doing. Saves a lot of time interviewing.

Not at all. If the candidate can solve fizzbuzz but fails at more difficult coding challenges you won't hire him/her. Therefore, the fizzbuzz test is not useful and it's offensive (or at least, boring) to any good candidate.

It's useful as a gatekeeper, to quickly weed out the chaff - I'm not saying it's the only test I do.

> it's offensive (or at least, boring) to any good candidate

Personally, I find this preposterous. When I get a CV, I don't know the person, and I need to decide if they are worth spending time on. FizzBuzz is a simple filter that I've found to be very effective the fact is that a lot of candidates just aren't up to even the most basic of tasks.

If being asked to do a dirt simple task that will take you less than 5 minutes offends you, then I don't want you on my team.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#177

Post by GordonS »

bitL wrote: post #73
GordonS wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's such a simple task, but in reality it's a fantastic way to weed out those that really don't have a clue what they're doing. Saves a lot of time interviewing.

...unless the person you are interviewing decides you are childish, immediately walks away and doesn't respond to your mail ever again, and your business goes belly up as you can't find anyone on the market with the skills that person was bringing, essential to your business. Frankly, not sure why anyone competent in the current climate should take you seriously if you attempted that. It's equivalent to asking a part…

> unless the person you are interviewing decides you are childish, immediately walks away and doesn't respond to your mail ever again, and your business goes belly up as you can't find anyone on the market with the skills that person was bringing

Literally not sure of this was meant to be ironic?

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#178

Post by majkinetor »

trickstra wrote: post #109
eitland wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But having 7 years of coding practice in several companies kinda does, because why else would those companies have you for so long? Several jobs in 7 years might very well imply several companies gave that person a chance and then gave up. I often got questions about that years ago, and it was completely reasonable, at one point I'd worked in 4 different positions in 5 years. (There were good reasons for it and I h…

> gave that person a chance and then gave up. Nobody "gives a chance" for a year. Either the problems were discovered during the probation period, or they were not as bad. Definitely not so bad that you'd have any chance discovering it during the interview. Besides, this high fluctuation is quite normal in IT.

That is simply not true in my experience. Its very hard to know if somebody is valuable within 6m unless they are completely bonk or completely great and majority of people is somewhere in between.

Most of the folks I personally ditched were working for company for about 1y. You still may not want to kick a person if he fails because you might recognize that he could be better at a different type of job (frontend -> automatic tests -> ci/cd ?). Notably, I didn't have success with this type of shifting so far but sample size is still small, maybe its just a failure bias. Nevertheless, in my mind this is the right thing to do, to offer another chance at something different, rather then kick people out on inability to adapt to particular problem space.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#179

Post by saltminer »

meuk wrote: post #70
larkeith wrote: post #12

Most of this is good, but one real WTF: "Editor Flailing It’s funny how many people can’t edit text on any machine but their own. I tend to interview people on a laptop running Ubuntu, and I open gedit for them to use, with the offer that they can use any other Unix editor they like. Most can barely navigate gedit, and it’s stupid simple. Don’t ever let yourself get hung up on the editor. If you can’t figure out the…

Letting a windows programmer use vi in an interview is just cruel. I mean, I like vim after months of practice, but just exiting vi(m) is notoriously hard for a newbie.

I'd agree if they were forced to use vi, but it seems like vi is just an option.

>I open gedit for them to use, with the offer that they can use any other Unix editor they like.

I wonder if he required using vi when that Windows programmer interviewed or if the Windows guy chose to use vi.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#180

Post by inferiorhuman »

sureaboutthis wrote: post #152
inferiorhuman wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just hit "i" to be dropped into insert mode, then just navigate with the arrows and use backspace like in any other editor. Yeah maybe. The default vi config that comes with FreeBSD will get out of insert mode if you use the arrow keys to go beyond the end of the line (and maybe some other situations I've forgotten). Editors are extremely personal, there's a pretty good reason that vi vs emacs is one of the eternal f…

> The default vi config that comes with FreeBSD will get out of insert mode if you use the arrow keys to go beyond the end of the line No it doesn't.

No it doesn't.

I checked before I made the post on a FreeBSD 12 machine. The stock vi on OSX (vim 8) behaves more "normally".

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