Drowning in a C of Interviews • Hacker News Board

Re: Drowning in a C of Interviews

#21

Post by grav1tas » Wed, Apr 13, 2011, 5:54 PM UTC

jedsmith wrote: post #8

tedunangst wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It more or less is at Fog Creek. I am not unfamiliar with the usage of C outside of Fog Creek.

They have their own compiler for a custom VBScript derivative. If there's no C anywhere in it, I'd be surprised, but I am operating without knowledge of its implementation or output. Edit: So what did I do wrong here? I admitted that I'm shooting in the dark, admitted that I'd be surprised if my hypothesis was true, and had absolutely no knowledge of who the person I'm replying to is. It's certainly not on his profil…

I'm not sure what's surprising about a compiler with no C in it. They're becoming much more common. I personally think C is an awful language to write a compiler in. One shouldn't be worrying about C's bookkeeping while also worrying about the bookkeeping a compiler requires.

Also, I think it's interesting when people use the word "interesting" when they probably really mean to use the word "annoying". If something really bugs you just say it bugs you.

Re: Drowning in a C of Interviews

#22

Post by pjscott » Wed, Apr 13, 2011, 6:17 PM UTC

cygwin98 wrote: post #16

thrawea wrote: post #10

It's a bit hard for me to believe that there are programmers, who dont understand Pointers! Though I am still in school, I feel everyone should understand how Memory works. My assumption is that everyone should at least know about: 1. Pointers and their physical meaning 2. Difference between Process specific virtual memory and physical memory 3. Difference between Static, Stack and Heap Memory. 4. Also it is importan…

I believe there is a difference between knowing how memory and pointers work and being proficient at pointer manipulation in C. If you enforce such kind of interviews in C, you will miss lots of great FP programmers. Maybe you don't care anyway.

I would bet that people who are good at working with pointers in C are drastically over-represented among great functional programmers, so you won't actually lose that many.

Re: Drowning in a C of Interviews

#23

Post by technomancy » Wed, Apr 13, 2011, 6:41 PM UTC

burgerbrain wrote: post #19

adestefan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really that shocking. Most people don't program in a language with manual memory allocation anymore. I would guess that people might know 1 when they think about it some, but really don't know anything about the rest.

Even if they don't personally use languages that require this knowledge on a regular basis, the idea that someone could come through a CS education and not know it is pretty stunning.

Not being able to write code that performs memory management doesn't mean you don't know how memory management works. It just means that you trust your GC.

Much more relevant would be to ask questions about what to do if you're spending too much time in GC and how to tune it rather than how you'd perform your own garbage collection.

Re: Drowning in a C of Interviews

#24

Post by tedunangst » Wed, Apr 13, 2011, 7:02 PM UTC

jedsmith wrote: post #8

tedunangst wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It more or less is at Fog Creek. I am not unfamiliar with the usage of C outside of Fog Creek.

They have their own compiler for a custom VBScript derivative. If there's no C anywhere in it, I'd be surprised, but I am operating without knowledge of its implementation or output. Edit: So what did I do wrong here? I admitted that I'm shooting in the dark, admitted that I'd be surprised if my hypothesis was true, and had absolutely no knowledge of who the person I'm replying to is. It's certainly not on his profil…

I didn't downvote, nor do I think your comment deserved to be, but I'll point out one thing. Instead of asking a question about the language used, you made a statement. In effect, you asserted that I was wrong. You don't need to know someone's full background to give them the benefit of the doubt, especially if your own knowledge is limited. I admit to being guilty for doing the same, it's quite easy to dismiss faceless handles.