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Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

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Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#301

Post by Noumenon72 »

psutor wrote: post #34
reginaldo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's how I finally memorized it: ln has a 1-file-argument invocation, so ln -s ../../a_fine_file will create a symbolic link to that file under the current directory and under the "a_fine_file" file name. The single argument case has to have the file you want to link to as input. That generalizes nicely as the 2-file-argument invocation maintaining the logic.

That's how I memorized it too! Really struggled with it until I started thinking of it that way.

What do you all use symbolic links for so much that you would need to memorize it?

Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#302

Post by Noumenon72 »

deathanatos wrote: post #269

Do yourself a favor and set up browser shortcuts. In Chrome, for example, you can add custom search engines. If you set the search URL to: https://google.com/search?q=site:docs.python.org/3+%s&btnI (That last character is a capital "eye"/I, for "I'm".) It does a Google "I'm Feeling Lucky" search for your query, and restricts the results to the Python docs. So, e.g., I can type: py enum And get the Python docs for the…

Wow. I was gonna say "Why not just right-click the search box on docs.python.org and add that?" But I tried your search and it's so much faster and more useful.

Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#303

Post by kbenson »

mikekchar wrote: post #287
wil421 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve asked pre-internet programmers and they said they used to keep reference books at their desk or even a small library/book room at their employers. I’ve heard some government contractors can’t google because they work on non-internet connected computers. They probably keep a lot of books.

I've never worked pre-internet. In fact, I've had internet access in all of my jobs, but I've definitely worked pre-"internet was a useful source for searching for answers to programming questions". I mean, we had Usenet, and you could ask a question, but we didn't have search engines that were useful in that capacity. I definitely had a lot of books, but actually the vast majority of my information came from man pag…

> we didn't have search engines that were useful in that capacity.

I remember that. I think it was a combination of there not being good reference websites in some cases, not good question sites in others, and search engines generally being both less good and having less of those sites to index.

I specifically remember finding sites that were goldmines for certain topics, and hoarding them in my bookmark list of useful resources.

Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#304

Post by brandonmenc »

wil421 wrote: post #197
setr wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm of the opinion that not googling stuff means you're not a proper engineer. And from what I've seen, those who don't google consistently also fail to understand the answers they find when they do google things. It is, in fact, an essential skill.

I’ve asked pre-internet programmers and they said they used to keep reference books at their desk or even a small library/book room at their employers. I’ve heard some government contractors can’t google because they work on non-internet connected computers. They probably keep a lot of books.

Starting around 8th grade, I would walk to the recently opened Barnes and Noble with a pen and notepad and hand copy material from programming books I couldn't afford, then walk back home and try the stuff out in Turbo C. Rinse, repeat.

Fun times.

Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#306

Post by kortilla »

abalone wrote: post #102
kortilla wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment propagates the nonsense that skills with algos are somehow harder or more exclusive than software engineering skills. They are orthogonal and interviews that conflate them are part of the problem. Consider this, many of the most novel algorithms were published without ever being run in actual software or in part of a larger system.

Most people would say algorithms are the building blocks of software engineering, not orthogonal. Most screens also include a systems design test. Maybe you could argue all we ever should do is system design tests. But they don’t always involve coding.

Aluminum is a building block of modern large airplanes. When hiring aeronautical engineers I don’t grill them on the finer points of aluminum smelting.

Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#307

Post by abalone »

levythe wrote: post #268
abalone wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obviously I was laughed at for someone who's actually had 10 years experience with c++ to forget something so basic but it happens when you are on the spot. This 100% happened to me (apart from being laughed at) only it was even more of a meltdown. Also 10 years experience and a problem I could do in my sleep. It was my first interview after a long time and it triggered performance anxiety and nervousness. The solu…

If the system is so poorly evaluating people that they have to train an irrelevant set of skills to succeed in it, what does that say about the system?

I wouldn't say coding algorithms is "irrelevant". It's sort of like saying the SAT is irrelevant. It's a general aptitude test. It's not about the "relevancy" of trigonometry to your day to day work.

You could argue it's stupid and colleges should only look at personal essays and GPAs and extracurriculars. But then there's problems with that too (lack of standardization for one).

You could argue that high schools shouldn't teach trig or calc because they're largely irrelevant to most tasks in most fields and "what does that say about the system". But actually they do come into play once and awhile and lay a conceptual foundation, so they're still sort of useful to learn. And thus they form a good common foundation to test aptitude inside an hour or so, or at least no one's thought of a better one.

Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#308

Post by abalone »

lliamander wrote: post #252
xvector wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whiteboard interviews exist because without them companies wouldn't have a metric to artificially restrict hiring. Passing a whiteboard interview makes both the company and interviewee feel special and maintains the bubble of software engineering salaries.

Companies don't care about artificially restricting hiring: they want developers to be as cheap as possible. The truth is, software engineering really quite hard, but that whiteboard interviews just happen to be a rather poor way of evaluating candidates. A work sample test, structured interview, or IQ test (alone or in combination) would be a much better filtering process.

> A work sample test, structured interview, or IQ test (alone or in combination) would be a much better filtering process.

I'm not sure what any of these mean in concrete terms. Is an IQ test like those "why are manhole covers round" Microsoft questions of yore? Yuck. Is a work sample a homework test? That takes more time for both parties. It's not a good substitute for a 1 hour first round screen. And what's a "structured" interview??

Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#309

Post by abalone »

sharadov wrote: post #244
abalone wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every student I’ve ever met seems to have a serious disdain for exams, but for some reason universities keep giving them.

I would rather do an exam every year, and get a grade on the skills that they expect. Exams are standardized, granted that they are not perfect, but its closest to a system that works. Am not at the whims and fancies of an individual interviewer.

I'm not sure what you mean by standardization. You're totally at the whim of the exam-maker either way. If anything I find algorithm screens tend to draw from a semi-standard set of fundamentals as outlined in books like Cracking the Coding Interview and tested on Leetcode among many other examples.

Re: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer

#310

Post by LeftHandPath »

_bxg1 wrote: post #95
abalone wrote: post #75

This is great but the premise seems kind of straw man. I don’t know a single developer that thinks “googling stuff means you’re not a proper engineer.” Perhaps this is a reference to the interviewing process. Tests are a different thing, though. I’ve been on practical technical screens where you can google, because the test was about building a larger system, and they don’t care if you don’t remember this or that API…

> I don’t know a single developer that thinks “googling stuff means you’re not a proper engineer.” I've met lots of younger devs who have varying degrees of impostor syndrome, so anecdotes like this probably help people like that feel less bad about not knowing everything.

It really does. I've been a professional developer/programmer for a few years - since I was 18 - and I'm only just going back to college (at the behest of my employer).

Really enjoy taking advantage of it and reassuring the younger kids (only two or three years younger than me) that they're more than capable of this shit. And it helps me be more confident when I'm at work - at school they see me as the guy with all the answers (ha, I wish - but it's a good reminder that we're all our own worst critics).

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