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If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers

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Re: If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers

#91

Post by singlow »

spiralpolitik wrote: post #79
frostmatthew wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of whiteboarding isn't to "build" correct/functional code - it's to get an idea of your thought process and how you go about solving a problem. It's not perfect (and there are both advantages and disadvantages to using a computer instead of a whiteboard) but when done correctly it gives a lot more useful insight than sitting there asking questions about their past the whole time.

Which would be perfectly valid if software developers spent their entire day solving problems on the whiteboard. But we don't.

At my first job this was very common. Usually it was more related to schema design and class hierarchies. But there were always white boards full of diagrams of whatever we worked on. We had folders full of digital photos of white boards as reference material.

I'll never forget how excited the lead dev was one day when he got some markers that would automatically make a digital file from whatever he drew on the white board.

Re: If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers

#92

Post by S4M »

ajross wrote: post #63
lordnacho wrote: post #44

This is so true. I see a lot of job ads that seem to require very specific experience, but where anyone in that field could do the job. If you just make up eg 4 different types of technology, and put a few things in each bracket: [SVN, Git, Mercurial, CVS] [MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MSSQL] [AMQP, MQTT, STOMP, RabbitMQ] [Java, C#, C++, ObjC] Now if someone came along and said they'd solved a domain problem (eg tradin…

Here's the thing though: the reason people hiring get so hung up on specifics is because they get burned repeatedly. Coding is just hard. Learning it is hard, doing it is hard, and there aren't enough people who can do it well to go around. So if you're a manager and need to "build a team", you can either play that needle in the haystack game (which you will always lose, because the needles generally don't even show…

Do you think someone who is familiar with git wouldn't be able to be productive with svn in more than one day (while doing other tasks of course)?

Getting familiar with the code base takes much longer than picking up C# if you have a Java background.

Re: If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers

#93

Post by jimbokun »

jhall1468 wrote: post #59
thomaskcr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't you just do it? I can understand if they're nit-picking syntax but I personally ask people to write out algorithms/code on the board all the time in interviews. I don't care about the code, I want to see them think through a problem. They can use any for syntax they want, even mix and match things like brackets and indentation or how control structures are defined (for i = 1 to 10 { .. } ), or use a func…

It's a contrived situation that involves significantly more nerves than any real life situation will. I've known more than a few programmers that were perfectly capable of doing their work, but struggled through interviews because they got nervous during the coding phase. The reality of the situation is that contrived problems in stressful situations are going to result in a lot of false negatives. That may be fine f…

If someone can't interact with colleagues to solve problems, and can only work when alone with the computer, it greatly limits the ability to work as part of a team.

Collaborative white board discussions are a pretty common part of many software development teams.

Re: If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers

#94

Post by freshyill »

jethro_tell wrote: post #85

Man this is the strangest thing to me. I used to be a carpenter. I would show up at your job site with my tools, you might ask me a couple questions, I've had guys ask me to lay out a wall or two off the prints. Call a reference to see if I show up to work. Then I get the job. Usually, doing something myself or my boss never had done before, and we would figure it out off the prints, and build it. I just go turned do…

And the real kicker is that no company really gives a shit about anyone. The expect complete loyalty, but they have none in return.

Re: If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers

#95

Post by DanielBMarkham »

Retric wrote: post #86
jhall1468 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bull. It teases out if someone happens to know the GetHash() implementation in C#. Their knowledge of .NET and C# can, in no way, be determined by one stupid question about the implementation of a specific function in C#. Evidence of that fact is in your actual response: I could now answer that question, having never used .NET or C#.

I would go so far as to say someone with that kind of encyclopedic understanding of a language is a negative indicator. People with an 'deep' understanding of a language like to use said knowledge to create 'Clever' code. 'Clever' code is generally more buggy, harder to maintain, and basically never needed. PS: And yes, I have been burned by this in the past often enough so I will now pass on a few marginal people th…

Here's my exact train of thought while reading that:

GetHash? What the frack? Isn't that on object somewhere? Right, object handles all the common copy semantics and so forth. Use the hash to check for equality; things on the stack instead of the heap, yadda yadda..

Dang, here the guy is going into detail why this is so important. Ah yes, value versus reference semantics. Boxing and so forth. Tiny trivia around how the CLR works. I remember those days well. Would make for a great Nerd Jeopardy question.

But who cares about all of that? I'll look it up if I need it. As far as memory usage, I worry about that by using pure FP and being careful what kinds of data structures I use. Problem solved.

Encyclopedic knowledge is great, but the real trick is dumping everything possible offline and then knowing how and when you should get back to looking at it.

Re: If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers

#96

Post by delinka »

bmoresbest55 wrote: post #20

I really enjoyed the post. I reminded me a lot of this Youtube video( http://youtu.be/BKorP55Aqvg ). I understand this is a comical post but as the son of a carpenter and understanding the profession decently well I would say these are none of the questions that would be asked of a carpenter. There are however many important questions a person would need to answer to be hired as a carpenter or more likely be able to…

"...these are none of the questions that would be asked of a carpenter."

That's exactly the point. But it parallels the useless questions so often asked of the general computer programmer by the Corporate HR Recruiter Drone .

Re: If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers

#97

Post by prostoalex »

lordnacho wrote: post #44

This is so true. I see a lot of job ads that seem to require very specific experience, but where anyone in that field could do the job. If you just make up eg 4 different types of technology, and put a few things in each bracket: [SVN, Git, Mercurial, CVS] [MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MSSQL] [AMQP, MQTT, STOMP, RabbitMQ] [Java, C#, C++, ObjC] Now if someone came along and said they'd solved a domain problem (eg tradin…

A lot of programming nowadays is not as much about writing primitives, but knowing ins and outs of specific frameworks and libraries.

How reasonable would it be to expect an Objective C / Swift guy to write high-quality C++ Boost code and vice versa?

In every company there's some amount of code that's written in X but definitely looks like the person writing it was more experienced in Y and just dragged Y idioms into his new project.

Re: If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers

#98

Post by falcolas »

vinceguidry wrote: post #80
barrkel wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

now I want to understand what a framework is I'll short-circuit that one for you right now: you call a library, a framework calls you - it figures out how by some combination of convention and configuration. Libraries put you in control, frameworks make you cede control. You can usually mix and match libraries, whereas you can only use one framework at a time comfortably.

So is jQuery a library or a framework? I've seen it called, and used, both ways. It's not a hard and fast definition, and that's what I mean by "really understanding" something. I want the things I build to be able to be used in any way that it would be useful. It's the fractal landscape at the boundary between the definitions that I'm interested in. I find myself refactoring code a lot, pulling pieces out and puttin…

I believe that jQuery is neither - it's a collection of tools to assist with programming webpages in whichever paradigm is appropriate for that particular task.

This approach gives the advantage of ceding ultimate control back to the programmer, at the cost of some internal inconsistency.

Re: If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers

#99

Post by fyarebox »

vinceguidry wrote: post #80
barrkel wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

now I want to understand what a framework is I'll short-circuit that one for you right now: you call a library, a framework calls you - it figures out how by some combination of convention and configuration. Libraries put you in control, frameworks make you cede control. You can usually mix and match libraries, whereas you can only use one framework at a time comfortably.

So is jQuery a library or a framework? I've seen it called, and used, both ways. It's not a hard and fast definition, and that's what I mean by "really understanding" something. I want the things I build to be able to be used in any way that it would be useful. It's the fractal landscape at the boundary between the definitions that I'm interested in. I find myself refactoring code a lot, pulling pieces out and puttin…

I'll expand on this with my understanding.

Library - a collection of useful things. Framework - a collection of things, and a methodology, used to structure your application.

In general, a lot of new, modern frameworks do 'call you' (Inversion of Control). Exmaple: Most PHP frameworks are setup so that you put all your models in one folder, your routes in another, etc. Then the framework itself accepts requests and determines which parts of your code to pass it through, and in what order.

However, you can also have frameworks that don't do IoC. You setup the framework, tell it what to do, tell it how to do it. But you still structure your code around that specific framework's methodology (which is why it's hard to mix 'n' match).

jQuery is an odd thing, because it's not really either of these. It provides lots of useful functions, but it also does so in a way that it replaces a lot of the 'core language features', and causes you to use it across most of your code.

However, I'd still say it's a library (with a very nice syntax) - since it doesn't tell you 'this is how you structure your application'. You can use jQuery how ever you like, and it imposes almost no constraints. Therefore it's not a framework.

Re: If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers

#100

Post by jethro_tell »

freshyill wrote: post #94
jethro_tell wrote: post #85

Man this is the strangest thing to me. I used to be a carpenter. I would show up at your job site with my tools, you might ask me a couple questions, I've had guys ask me to lay out a wall or two off the prints. Call a reference to see if I show up to work. Then I get the job. Usually, doing something myself or my boss never had done before, and we would figure it out off the prints, and build it. I just go turned do…

And the real kicker is that no company really gives a shit about anyone. The expect complete loyalty, but they have none in return.

Yeah, that kinda bums me out.
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