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The dispassionate developer

blog.ploeh.dk

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Re: The dispassionate developer

#221

Post by 908B64B197 »

elanning wrote: post #220
908B64B197 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% of those who can't code would refuse it indeed!

Imagine you're a senior developer with over 10 years experience. You're happily employed and make good money. You're contacted by a recruiter for an interview. Perhaps the company even uses some software you wrote. "Ok this problem is called fizzbuzz. We just need to see if you can really code." It sounds like the situation was of course different, but situations like above have happened.

I don't need to imagine it: It happened.

I laughed and wrote the solution on the board.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#222

Post by PeterWhittaker »

capitalistLove wrote: post #215

I dont think this person understands passion. When you do something out of passion, it doesnt burn you out. It doesnt feel like work, because you enjoy it. By definition, you cant burn out by pursuing your passion. I am passionate about software development - I enjoy it and while I have experienced burnout before, its never been from software development, only from all of the other things that have to do with busines…

I have to take issue with the notion that doing a thing out of passion will not burn you out: it is possible to overdo a thing - out of passion - to the extent it does burn you out.

Speaking from personal experience....

Recovery is easier/faster than in the non-passion case, but it still happens.

As to being dispassionate, when I take such an approach, even to the passionate thing, I have greater endurance and tolerance for moments of frustration.

Seems to me that protects from overdoing it too.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#223

Post by jpetso »

908B64B197 wrote: post #218
fbleibel wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, I think this is a huge red flag. Just go along with the interviewer, maybe highlight that this is typically and entry-level problem, but solve it. You really don't want to hire someone who not only can't solve fizzbuzz, but also refuses to hear about it and complain that it's 'beneath them' (what a annoying attitude!).

FizzBuzz typically gets raised eyebrows from folks who never had to do it because they assume there's a trick somewhere. It can't just be a one-liner they assume. https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/

Of course it's not, there's always a better way: https://joelgrus.com/2016/05/23/fizz-buzz-in-tensorflow/

Re: The dispassionate developer

#224

Post by omniscient_oce »

californical wrote: post #83
bauerd wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about merit but about bias

You generally become better with more practice though, right? Whole 10,000 hours thing? Surely someone who spends more time developing will be better at it. Now of course this doesn’t matter past a certain point — people could spend all their time working on something that doesn’t help them grow. Then once you have those 10,000 hours of actual growth, you are probably close to a Senior developer level. Which after 5…

I've seen this on Reddit a fair bit too but there's this sort of anti "10x-er" attitude. It makes logical sense to me that if someone spends more time practising a skill, then they would be more proficient and thus worth paying more. Yet there's a lot of pushback against that thought process because it is biased or something. Obviously there's more to a candidate than purely 'coding' skill but I find it weird that a company would want to explicitly avoid an indicator of time spent honing skill X purely because it discredits other people. I guess in an idealistic world it makes sense but the real world never quite lives up to the ideals.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#225

Post by Kranar »

capitalistLove wrote: post #215

I dont think this person understands passion. When you do something out of passion, it doesnt burn you out. It doesnt feel like work, because you enjoy it. By definition, you cant burn out by pursuing your passion. I am passionate about software development - I enjoy it and while I have experienced burnout before, its never been from software development, only from all of the other things that have to do with busines…

Words do have different meanings depending on context and a host of facts, and you are entitled to have some interpretation of the word passion but in its most literal and original sense, passion means to act in suffering. That is, you act out of such a desire towards something that you suffer and sacrifice yourself in the process, ie. The Passion of Jesus.

It also has a romantic sense to it, for example you are passionately in love if you suffer for that love and would sacrifice yourself for it. You are passionate about something if you're willing to die for it. That is, your feelings about something are so intense that you are willing to endure suffering and pain for it. A programmer is passionate if they devote themselves to it to the point that they end up sacrificing other parts of their life in the process.

I am passionate about programming in that sense, for better or worse, and have knowingly sacrificed a great deal in pursuit of this skill and have lost out in many other areas of my life because of it. I am not ashamed to admit it anymore than a Medical Doctor is ashamed to admit that they must also sacrifice a great deal of their life to pursue their career path, doctors are also passionate about their career.

It would be hard to claim that you are passionate about something without admitting to sacrificing or risking something in pursuit of that passion or feeling pain about it such as burning out or struggling to the point of feeling exhausted, even depressed in some cases. It does not mean doing something out of fun or joy or leisure, it means doing something in spite of the pain often because you believe in it so strongly that you put aside feelings of joy.

That said, there are certainly very competent developers who are incredibly productive and aren't passionate about it, and as you said it may even be the case that people who do programming for fun end up being productive because it's fun for them and that helps keep them motivated. That's amazing and I admire such people... but that's not being passionate in its most common usage, passion kind of has a fairly common meaning and the author is using it appropriately.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#226

Post by jimbob45 »

Derpdiherp wrote: post #5

Maybe it's the jobs that I've worked, or the country I'm in ( UK ). But I've really not seen this shift towards looking at portfolios of open source work rather than CV's. Every company I've worked for has requested a CV, and often does some form of test or in person interview centred around programming problems. The tests vary in quality and depth. I wouldn't think of myself as a passionate developer. I have a famil…

I’ve applied to hundreds of jobs and I can count on one hand the number of times my GitHub was looked at.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#227

Post by concreteblock »

orangecat wrote: post #193
indigochill wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our take-home obviously isn't a trade secret, so we have three trivial problems in ours: 1. Write code that takes in a rectangle, coordinate, and distance, and tells if that coordinate is within the distance of the rectangle. 2. Determine whether a string has permutations which are palindromes. (I'm of the opinion this one is too simple, but it's been fascinating seeing what mental gymnastics some developers will go…

2. Determine whether a string has permutations which are palindromes. If I understand this correctly, it's the sort of problem that's simple if you see the trick and hard if you don't. I'd expect many candidates to think that you actually want them to generate all the permutations and then get bogged down in recursion. #1 is good, and #3 sounds interesting.

> I'd expect many candidates to think that you actually want them to generate all the permutations and then get bogged down in recursion.

Ideally the candidate should realize that this is computationally infeasible and quickly come up with a much more efficient solution, right? Perhaps they believe that this question filters out people who 1) don't have a feel for what is computationally feasible 2) will just dive into coding without spending 10 seconds to see if there's a significant optimization.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#228

Post by capitalistLove »

Kranar wrote: post #225
capitalistLove wrote: post #215

I dont think this person understands passion. When you do something out of passion, it doesnt burn you out. It doesnt feel like work, because you enjoy it. By definition, you cant burn out by pursuing your passion. I am passionate about software development - I enjoy it and while I have experienced burnout before, its never been from software development, only from all of the other things that have to do with busines…

Words do have different meanings depending on context and a host of facts, and you are entitled to have some interpretation of the word passion but in its most literal and original sense, passion means to act in suffering. That is, you act out of such a desire towards something that you suffer and sacrifice yourself in the process, ie. The Passion of Jesus. It also has a romantic sense to it, for example you are pass…

I have honestly never thought of the word passion in those terms. To me, it has always been an intensley positive word with connotations of love and wellbeing - but I can see how someone could go through life with your definition and have every instance of the word passion make sense, but mean something different than it means to me, and also simultaneously make sense to me.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#229

Post by capitalistLove »

PeterWhittaker wrote: post #222
capitalistLove wrote: post #215

I dont think this person understands passion. When you do something out of passion, it doesnt burn you out. It doesnt feel like work, because you enjoy it. By definition, you cant burn out by pursuing your passion. I am passionate about software development - I enjoy it and while I have experienced burnout before, its never been from software development, only from all of the other things that have to do with busines…

I have to take issue with the notion that doing a thing out of passion will not burn you out: it is possible to overdo a thing - out of passion - to the extent it does burn you out. Speaking from personal experience.... Recovery is easier/faster than in the non-passion case, but it still happens. As to being dispassionate, when I take such an approach, even to the passionate thing, I have greater endurance and tolera…

I think we're using the word passion differently. I have certainly gone through periods of time when I have completley lost interest in programming - for a variety or reasons, possibly involving working too much. But, I'd say that in these circumstances I have lost my passion for programming (and was fortunate to get it back later).

My point is more that there really are people who contribute to OSS and whatnot for no reason other than that they felt good doing so. I think this is a behavior to be encouraged and celebrated. I agree with the author's point that we shouldnt encourage extra suffering-inducing work for the sake of it, but disagree with his take that all acts of extra-curricular work cause suffering in those that do it.

Re: The dispassionate developer

#230

Post by fukmbas »

Developer this developer that. Fact is there are many other technical jobs that do not require full time programming a github repo. Always will be. Someone has to fix the crap you guys code.
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