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

Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

joshcarter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–199 of 199 posts

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#191

Post by bartread »

eitland wrote: post #90
bitL wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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, ...in that case they just proved they were childish and I'd be happy to avoid working with them. > 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. I think you are overestimating the value o…

> If someone is too full of themselves to write a FizzBuzz once they are too full of themselves for a number of other tasks as well.

Agreed: and one of the related issues that's worth stating is the damage and demoralisation to your team(s) that's likely to result, were they hired.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#192

Post by SergeAx »

This brought me to full stop:

> it’s worth a few hours of my time to prepare for an interview

So, how many interviews he did in one week? 1 or even 0.5? Today typical manager with 2-3 open positions performs no less than 3 interviews a week. I personally will not spend all my time learning some irrelevant languages or frameworks just to show off in front of random people passed through HR screening.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#193

Post by inferiorhuman »

sureaboutthis wrote: post #189
inferiorhuman wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I'm on FreeBSD 12 now. No it doesn't. And vim is not vi but vim doesn't do that either.

Dunno what to tell you. At a prompt, running vi and entering the following keys:

i a b c [right arrow] d e f

results in vi displaying the text:

ab

Note that the key f generates a bell as vi is no longer in insert/append mode.

If you're seeing different behavior I can only assume you've got wildly different terminal settings, you've configured vi and forgot about it, or have aliased vi to vim or some vi variant from ports.

Either way that lends credence to the idea that judging someone for being uncomfortable at a vi prompt is a bad way to interview candidates.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#194

Post by inferiorhuman »

peterangular wrote: post #143
hluska wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walking into an interview, being given vi and told to write code would be a horrible experience. Expecting someone to grasp a dramatically different editor with interview jitters is unfair. Frankly, that’s the kind of behaviour that would be a massive red flag for me - it would absolutely lead me to reject any position I was offered.

Agree. I'm perfectly capable at vi and I'd probably just walk because it shows total arrogance on the interviewer's part. Anecdotal - I use zsh, with the bureau theme - pretty obvious it's not just a bash shell. During a more operations-focused interview I had someone ask me if he could use bash because he wasn't very familiar with zsh and would like to work with a known tool. Super competent guy. I thought it was a…

Additionally vi is so configurable that one may be intimately familiar with their own vi configuration but really awkward with the stock (or interviewer's) configuration.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#195

Post by skrebbel »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #193
sureaboutthis wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on FreeBSD 12 now. No it doesn't. And vim is not vi but vim doesn't do that either.

Dunno what to tell you. At a prompt, running vi and entering the following keys: i a b c [right arrow] d e f results in vi displaying the text: ab Note that the key f generates a bell as vi is no longer in insert/append mode. If you're seeing different behavior I can only assume you've got wildly different terminal settings, you've configured vi and forgot about it, or have aliased vi to vim or some vi variant from p…

I have absolutely no vi knowledge. I just opened an ssh to a vanilla Ubuntu install (digital ocean droplet), tried what you wrote, and I got:

    abcdef
I've been accidentally dropped into vi on countless systems and never have my ability to type "i" and "ESC :wq" (the full extent of my vi skills) failed me.

I'm super confused by your comment.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#196

Post by MayeulC »

nemetroid wrote: post #66
GordonS wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only have to edit a file on Linux once every couple of months of so - I tired of forgetting how to exit vi (or enter/exit edit mode, save the file... just about anything really), so started installing nano as the first thing I do on any system. Nano is so much more obvious than vi.

Most people can't install arbitrary software on every system they access.

This exactly. I am pretty sure that if you gain [adb] shell access inside of an android recovery partition (as a random example), you have read-only access to the system, with only busybox at your disposal. Thus vi, but no nano.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#197

Post by MayeulC »

loopbit wrote: post #118
GordonS wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, there's a reason why there are so many "can't quit vi" memes.

Reading the comments about vi... Am I the only one that knows/uses ZZ to save and quit?

As I tend not quit vi that often compared to the time I spend inside, I prefer to use the more explicit version. I have made some mistakes in the past typing `^X-O` in nano instead of `^X-N` because of muscle memory, thereby overwriting a file I didn't want, and I am afraid of repeating this if `ZZ` became part of my muscle memory.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#198

Post by peterangular »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #194
peterangular wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. I'm perfectly capable at vi and I'd probably just walk because it shows total arrogance on the interviewer's part. Anecdotal - I use zsh, with the bureau theme - pretty obvious it's not just a bash shell. During a more operations-focused interview I had someone ask me if he could use bash because he wasn't very familiar with zsh and would like to work with a known tool. Super competent guy. I thought it was a…

Additionally vi is so configurable that one may be intimately familiar with their own vi configuration but really awkward with the stock (or interviewer's) configuration.

> Additionally vi is so configurable that one may be intimately familiar with their own vi configuration

Didn't even think of that - you could totally say the same about my Sublime editor =D

People are comfortable with their own tools and I don't like putting candidates into a corner with what they're using.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#199

Post by prepend »

detaro wrote: post #174
prepend wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Right, I think a vast majority of “really good” engineers will know minimal vi skills.

My point is that you can be a perfectly nice programmer with a full career without being really good.

Post reply on HN