After doing my fair share of interviewing and being interviewed, I have to agree with this comment. Most IT jobs aren't looking for someone who can recite information back to them, they are looking for people who have basic knowledge of the topics and are able to think on their feet, adapt, actually know how to SEARCH for the information that they don't know off the top of their head.
I tend to hire people who are passionate about their skillset rather than just competent!
No joke, on the 28th Nov, I was reminded of something he did after watching something on TV. I started thinking, "Wait a minute, has he passed away?" and checked a few sites to see. Absolutely nothing reported. Then today, I find out that he died the very next day. Man I'm freaked out!
The system I have seen work very well in the past is to create a culture of accountability, where as part of finding the bug, if nobody owns up to making a mistake, the SVN logs are traced to find the originator of the bug and it filed as part of the bug report. It sounds vindictive, but it is more a learning exercise to find out the weaknesses in our development process. What this does however is give someone a great incentive to test every case before committing, since their mistakes will be known to the whole team soon. Nobody tests better than the original dev, when his pride is on the line.
Definitely seen a lot of this around the traps but the biggest problem with this is (not that this isn't effective) most companies that rely upon this type of accountability rarely ever flip that around and start giving accolades or acknowledgements when the devs are working well.
If the company handles both the positive and the negative I believe a well balanced dev environment could exist. Unfortunately giving praise is rarely something a dev gets!
"Very few people are capable of excelling at both simultaneously. That's why you end up with ugly but capable interfaces, or beautiful but useless interfaces" - you just described me to a tee (ugly but capable not beautiful but useless):P
I think my point is that, devs that do unit testing are contributing to the testing overall which is sweet, but come on, who ever makes unit tests that are 'decent' enough to ensure that the testing is done correctly?
IMHO testing should be done by people who CARE about testing. Devs who do shitty unit testing contribute to the facade that the testing is done and working properly but in reality a shitty unit test could mask other problems.
At that point you're creating more problems than you are solving!
'It would be a shame if they weren't still exposing children to programming in school.'
I totally agree. Having the experience of entering a program from a book and being happy in the output was the primary reason I became a programmer. It is a shame that my kids are not being exposed to this at school.
My decision between waiting for the iPhone or taking a HTC Desire was a fairly hard decision. So glad I chose my HTC, nothing but sweet performance, reception and functionality!
Your opinion is duely noted, though certainly not the opinion of the people that I know. Ignorance may not be a defense, but it does happen to the best of us, yourself included, or are you telling me that you are not ignorant about any subject you speak about before you speak about it?
Your attitude of "how stupid you are" certainly does not give much sway to your opinion though. Perhaps you could be a little less insulting and a little more helpful. Someone shooting themselves in the foot is the last person you need to be explaining the values of gun safey to!
Fucken oath! When I voted I voted for a person, not a fucking party!
I know that's not how it works, but just like Puff states, the factions move in different directions within the parties, so voting for one, knowing what faction and direction they are heading, represents the leaders WE voted for.
Having someone else just "put" there by default (I mean come on...who wants to win by default? How pathetic!) is as bad as having the opposition given power without notice.
Besides, what's with the flaming people? These are opinions, not insults directed especially at you! Fark me!
To be quite honest I'm certain almost all people of every country are completely oblivious to the inner workings of their government (let alone the "basics"). To say that I "don't understand how your own political system works" would be an understatement.
Like the multitude of companies that get sued for "false advertising", the government should be educating the masses to explain these situation with a LOT less ambiguity.
When it comes to an election, they present "the person" rather than the party, so for the masses, we are electing a person, rather than a party. Knowing how the system works is all well and good but my original point still remains, being unable to control who leads the party is still like being told to take it like a bitch and don't complain.
To be frank, I don't believe the masses know any better, so to expect otherwise is a very unreasonable demand that you're hopeless in pursuing.
To vote for one person, only to be screwed over and have someone I have absolutely no faith in, forced into leadership is like a woman saying "No", but having it done anyway!
As an Aussie, I don't give a shit that she's a woman, I'm just pissed that it happened without anyone in the public's vote!
And then the "girl power" bullshit..."Oh now my daughter can look up and see some other woman has done it" I mean FUCK off! I have two daughters and if they want to lead this country do you think I would have said, "Oh sorry girls, no other woman has done it before, you're shit out of luck!" FUCK NO! My daughters can do ANYTHING, regardless of their gender! To have people say this is a win for the chicks just adds insult to injury.
If you wanted to elect someone to fuck the country over, at least give us a chance to vote for them instead of shoving them up our ass and telling us to take it like a bitch!
I think that when we started, we used libraries because we didn't know HOW to do certain things, but as we grew (hopefully) we learned how to do those things and found better more efficient ways to build them.
Then we found out that libraries attempt to be generic enough for any purpose, then saw that life can rarely utilise generic libraries for 100% of our requirements so we built bloated software.
Then we learned that certain concepts require "from scratch" work, even if it is "re-inventing the wheel" every now and then, to ultimately realise that sometimes you can re-use code and some times you can't!
We all have to go through the hard yards as no-one will ever "just believe" you when you tell them otherwise:)
This poses a potentially HUGE problem with regards to supporting an OS. As soon as any old company can take a distro and alter it to handle the way it wants to then you're going to get exceptions that will cause tech support issues beyond the, "Are you running Linux, Mac or Windows".
Kewl idea, potentially huge side-effects!
is that Perl would handle almost every generic programming problem you have. Then if you wanted to venture into GUI land you could either use Perl/Tk or start with Mono and Gtk+.
This will give you the broadest range of deployment options as you don't have to worry about compiler specific issues.
Basically it comes down to this. If the project started out as a "let's get something going and work from there" project and has now become something of a "this thing works, let's extend it's functionality" then you've got to make a choice.
Either take the concept and build it correctly (either by writing from scratch or extending the classes that you have) or continue to hack it.
I feel that taking a prototype and making it a production quality application needs to have the time spent doing it right! Prototypes fall over, it's their nature, but you don't want the same behaviour from your production apps!
now Open Source simply looks like the shitty cheaper alternative to what they'd prefer to use. This isn't some much a victory, more so an eye opener for those who would dismiss Open Source applications simply because of a stigma. Anyhow, I'm just glad more people will see Open Source as a path to choose (not the only path - the right tool for the right job!) and expand our ever growing popularity!
Slashdot Mirror
After doing my fair share of interviewing and being interviewed, I have to agree with this comment. Most IT jobs aren't looking for someone who can recite information back to them, they are looking for people who have basic knowledge of the topics and are able to think on their feet, adapt, actually know how to SEARCH for the information that they don't know off the top of their head.
I tend to hire people who are passionate about their skillset rather than just competent!
Would be an interesting look at some of the reg ex debugging I've had to do!
Would you really expect anyone on /. to carry an iPhone over Droid?
So true :)
My GOD yes. Still use Chrome but come on, if it's something we want as a feature, just bloody add it!
Stargate has been a fantastic inspiration and source of relaxation for me and will continue to be so for a long time to come.
It sux that it's not going to be renewed, though certainly not surprising given the numbers.
Pity I live in Australia and couldn't have contributed to the viewership!
It's sad to say that we're living in a day where no more stargate is being produced!
RIP Stargate, you will be missed.
No joke, on the 28th Nov, I was reminded of something he did after watching something on TV. I started thinking, "Wait a minute, has he passed away?" and checked a few sites to see. Absolutely nothing reported. Then today, I find out that he died the very next day. Man I'm freaked out!
RIP Leslie, you shall be missed!
Simple but true (for the moment) ;P
The system I have seen work very well in the past is to create a culture of accountability, where as part of finding the bug, if nobody owns up to making a mistake, the SVN logs are traced to find the originator of the bug and it filed as part of the bug report. It sounds vindictive, but it is more a learning exercise to find out the weaknesses in our development process. What this does however is give someone a great incentive to test every case before committing, since their mistakes will be known to the whole team soon. Nobody tests better than the original dev, when his pride is on the line.
Definitely seen a lot of this around the traps but the biggest problem with this is (not that this isn't effective) most companies that rely upon this type of accountability rarely ever flip that around and start giving accolades or acknowledgements when the devs are working well.
If the company handles both the positive and the negative I believe a well balanced dev environment could exist. Unfortunately giving praise is rarely something a dev gets!
"Very few people are capable of excelling at both simultaneously. That's why you end up with ugly but capable interfaces, or beautiful but useless interfaces" - you just described me to a tee (ugly but capable not beautiful but useless) :P
I think my point is that, devs that do unit testing are contributing to the testing overall which is sweet, but come on, who ever makes unit tests that are 'decent' enough to ensure that the testing is done correctly?
IMHO testing should be done by people who CARE about testing. Devs who do shitty unit testing contribute to the facade that the testing is done and working properly but in reality a shitty unit test could mask other problems.
At that point you're creating more problems than you are solving!
Personally I feel that the dev should never do the testing of their own code as they are too close to the subject to test every angle.
:P
Sorry this doesn't answer you question
'It would be a shame if they weren't still exposing children to programming in school.'
:)
I totally agree. Having the experience of entering a program from a book and being happy in the output was the primary reason I became a programmer. It is a shame that my kids are not being exposed to this at school.
Fortunately I am doing it for them myself
Sorry but I have to second that...I lol'ed too! :P
My decision between waiting for the iPhone or taking a HTC Desire was a fairly hard decision. So glad I chose my HTC, nothing but sweet performance, reception and functionality!
Your opinion is duely noted, though certainly not the opinion of the people that I know. Ignorance may not be a defense, but it does happen to the best of us, yourself included, or are you telling me that you are not ignorant about any subject you speak about before you speak about it?
Your attitude of "how stupid you are" certainly does not give much sway to your opinion though. Perhaps you could be a little less insulting and a little more helpful. Someone shooting themselves in the foot is the last person you need to be explaining the values of gun safey to!
Fucken oath! When I voted I voted for a person, not a fucking party!
I know that's not how it works, but just like Puff states, the factions move in different directions within the parties, so voting for one, knowing what faction and direction they are heading, represents the leaders WE voted for.
Having someone else just "put" there by default (I mean come on...who wants to win by default? How pathetic!) is as bad as having the opposition given power without notice.
Besides, what's with the flaming people? These are opinions, not insults directed especially at you! Fark me!
Damn she's hot! Look who we're stuck with man!
To be quite honest I'm certain almost all people of every country are completely oblivious to the inner workings of their government (let alone the "basics"). To say that I "don't understand how your own political system works" would be an understatement.
Like the multitude of companies that get sued for "false advertising", the government should be educating the masses to explain these situation with a LOT less ambiguity.
When it comes to an election, they present "the person" rather than the party, so for the masses, we are electing a person, rather than a party. Knowing how the system works is all well and good but my original point still remains, being unable to control who leads the party is still like being told to take it like a bitch and don't complain.
To be frank, I don't believe the masses know any better, so to expect otherwise is a very unreasonable demand that you're hopeless in pursuing.
To vote for one person, only to be screwed over and have someone I have absolutely no faith in, forced into leadership is like a woman saying "No", but having it done anyway!
As an Aussie, I don't give a shit that she's a woman, I'm just pissed that it happened without anyone in the public's vote!
And then the "girl power" bullshit..."Oh now my daughter can look up and see some other woman has done it" I mean FUCK off! I have two daughters and if they want to lead this country do you think I would have said, "Oh sorry girls, no other woman has done it before, you're shit out of luck!" FUCK NO! My daughters can do ANYTHING, regardless of their gender! To have people say this is a win for the chicks just adds insult to injury.
If you wanted to elect someone to fuck the country over, at least give us a chance to vote for them instead of shoving them up our ass and telling us to take it like a bitch!
I think that when we started, we used libraries because we didn't know HOW to do certain things, but as we grew (hopefully) we learned how to do those things and found better more efficient ways to build them. Then we found out that libraries attempt to be generic enough for any purpose, then saw that life can rarely utilise generic libraries for 100% of our requirements so we built bloated software. Then we learned that certain concepts require "from scratch" work, even if it is "re-inventing the wheel" every now and then, to ultimately realise that sometimes you can re-use code and some times you can't! We all have to go through the hard yards as no-one will ever "just believe" you when you tell them otherwise :)
This poses a potentially HUGE problem with regards to supporting an OS. As soon as any old company can take a distro and alter it to handle the way it wants to then you're going to get exceptions that will cause tech support issues beyond the, "Are you running Linux, Mac or Windows". Kewl idea, potentially huge side-effects!
The trek world will never be the same!
is that Perl would handle almost every generic programming problem you have. Then if you wanted to venture into GUI land you could either use Perl/Tk or start with Mono and Gtk+.
This will give you the broadest range of deployment options as you don't have to worry about compiler specific issues.
http://www.gibby.net.au/
Basically it comes down to this. If the project started out as a "let's get something going and work from there" project and has now become something of a "this thing works, let's extend it's functionality" then you've got to make a choice.
Either take the concept and build it correctly (either by writing from scratch or extending the classes that you have) or continue to hack it.
I feel that taking a prototype and making it a production quality application needs to have the time spent doing it right! Prototypes fall over, it's their nature, but you don't want the same behaviour from your production apps!
now Open Source simply looks like the shitty cheaper alternative to what they'd prefer to use. This isn't some much a victory, more so an eye opener for those who would dismiss Open Source applications simply because of a stigma. Anyhow, I'm just glad more people will see Open Source as a path to choose (not the only path - the right tool for the right job!) and expand our ever growing popularity!