Newbie Programming Interviews/Get a Job Megathread: Fake it 'til you make it

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Newbie Programming Interviews/Get a Job Megathread: Fake it 'til you make it

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baquerd: Jul 2, 2007; by FactsAreUseless

Jose Valasquez posted:

If anything I think new coders are more gung-ho about comments and commits and trying to do things the right way than the jaded guys who have been working on the same application for 10 years.

It's always rough talking the new guys out of comments like this though. Comment why, not what or how!

code:

//finalize all accepted records in the list
for (Record record : recordList) {
    if (record.isAccepted()) {
        record.finalize();
    }
}

# ? Feb 3, 2017 23:12

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# ? May 31, 2024 05:46

New Yorp New Yorp: Jul 18, 2003; Only in Kenya.; Pillbug

baquerd posted:

It's always rough talking the new guys out of comments like this though. Comment why, not what or how!
code:
//finalize all accepted records in the list
for (Record record : recordList) {
    if (record.isAccepted()) {
        record.finalize();
    }
}

It's always either comments like that or comments that directly contradict what the code actually does since no one ever updated them.

# ? Feb 3, 2017 23:42

lifg: Dec 4, 2000; <this tag left blank>; Muldoon

Bob Morales posted:

There is nothing worse than someone with "10 years of 1 year of experience"

My old team lead used to say he wanted someone with ten years of experience, not one year of experience repeated ten times.

# ? Feb 3, 2017 23:59

piratepilates: Mar 28, 2004; So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it.

I've never had to interview people before, and I have no real way of telling if I have 3 years of experience or 1 year repeated three times.

What exactly are signs that differentiate the two? Like what really is someone with 10 1-year experiences like in an interview or a job?

# ? Feb 4, 2017 00:13

Fellatio del Toro: Mar 21, 2009

baquerd posted:

It's always rough talking the new guys out of comments like this though. Comment why, not what or how!
code:
//finalize all accepted records in the list
for (Record record : recordList) {
    if (record.isAccepted()) {
        record.finalize();
    }
}

My lead dev does this for almost every single line of code. I'm looking right now at a function with 13 lines of code and 12 lines of comments.

# ? Feb 4, 2017 00:25

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

piratepilates posted:

What exactly are signs that differentiate the two? Like what really is someone with 10 1-year experiences like in an interview or a job?

The giveaway is working for ten different companies in ten years, but in general it's someone who doesn't really have the breadth or depth of experience that they should for the amount of time they've been working.

# ? Feb 4, 2017 01:13

JawnV6: Jul 4, 2004; So hot ...

piratepilates posted:

I've never had to interview people before, and I have no real way of telling if I have 3 years of experience or 1 year repeated three times.

What exactly are signs that differentiate the two? Like what really is someone with 10 1-year experiences like in an interview or a job?

You should be moving to bigger things or more abstract. "Implement this spec" in year 1 should be replaced with "Write this spec" by year 3. If you're doing largely the same tasks, with the same tools, and the only thing changing is the calendar and project name you might be at risk. Most companies don't want that to happen.

The specific instance of "10 1-year experiences" I can recall was someone who was a scaling contractor. His resume was a series of companies that all hit the same problem and brought him in to fix it. I have zero doubt that he could solve that one problem, but it was difficult to get him to relate to other aspects of the business or technology.

# ? Feb 4, 2017 01:30

ToxicSlurpee: Nov 5, 2003; -=SEND HELP=-; Pillbug

Thermopyle posted:

Also, from the other side when you're looking for a job, don't pay a lot of attention to the "required" years of experience in a listing.

My personal favorite thing is seeing job postings that require 40 years of experience total or more years of experience in something than it has existed for.

Why yes I'm sure there are programmers with 10 years of experience with Go. Lots of them. Thousands, even! You just need to ask for them. :downs:

# ? Feb 4, 2017 02:56

lifg: Dec 4, 2000; <this tag left blank>; Muldoon

piratepilates posted:

I've never had to interview people before, and I have no real way of telling if I have 3 years of experience or 1 year repeated three times.

What exactly are signs that differentiate the two? Like what really is someone with 10 1-year experiences like in an interview or a job?

I don't have a *ton* of experience interviewing. I'm always one of a series of interviewers, and we talk about it at the end and come to a group consensus.

For very experienced people I look for things like:

- Having solved problems with hard trade-offs, and gotten them to production.

- Familiarity with a variety of tools, and expertise with a few.

- Experience (and a story) with handling things going wrong, and fighting for what they believe in.

- Can teach me something.

It's weird when you interview a 10 year QA vet, and you ask them something simple like, "tell me about a time you disagreed with the boss/devs/BAs about whatever," and they don't have anything to talk about.

# ? Feb 4, 2017 03:36

baquerd: Jul 2, 2007; by FactsAreUseless

lifg posted:

It's weird when you interview a 10 year QA vet, and you ask them something simple like, "tell me about a time you disagreed with the boss/devs/BAs about whatever," and they don't have anything to talk about.

You need to be careful here to screen on excessive politeness though.

# ? Feb 4, 2017 05:03

sarehu: Apr 20, 2007; (call/cc call/cc)

"My boss? Hmm. There were balloons all over the office floor. One of them popped as I moved it out of the way, so I threatened to kill him."

I got a raise, and the balloons were soon removed.

# ? Feb 4, 2017 06:10

b0lt: Apr 29, 2005

baquerd posted:

It's always rough talking the new guys out of comments like this though. Comment why, not what or how!
code:
//finalize all accepted records in the list
for (Record record : recordList) {
    if (record.isAccepted()) {
        record.finalize();
    }
}

I don't think a comment of sufficient quality to justify that can exist...

# ? Feb 4, 2017 06:31

Jarl: Nov 8, 2007; So what if I'm not for the ever offended?

Experience probably also means you know more about all sort of technologies, protocols and systems (could be something simple like knowing many relevant details of HTTP). Maybe your theory has even been augmented. I for one know a lot more about distributed systems at the micro level than I did after taking a course about distributed systems at the university (although I learned things in that course I probably wouldn't have learned otherwise).

# ? Feb 4, 2017 10:03

Doghouse: Oct 22, 2004; I was playing Harvest Moon 64 with this kid who lived on my street and my cows were not doing well and I got so raged up and frustrated that my eyes welled up with tears and my friend was like are you crying dude. Are you crying because of the cows. I didn't understand the feeding mechanic.

Am I the only one who hate all comments?

# ? Feb 5, 2017 15:07

spiritual bypass: Feb 19, 2008; Grimey Drawer

Doghouse posted:

Am I the only one who hate all comments?

Not at all. Short functions with verbose names paired with unit tests provide the most useful descriptions. Otherwise, you're just trying to compensate for awkward code in most cases. If there's some serious computer science or weird tricks going on, a link to an article might be helpful, I guess.

# ? Feb 5, 2017 15:27

Tres Burritos: Sep 3, 2009

I used to work with a guy who said he made "self commenting code" and it was the worst, most indecipherable poo poo I'd ever seen.

# ? Feb 5, 2017 15:59

camoseven: Dec 30, 2005; RODOLPHONE RINGIN'

It's been my experience that people who think their code doesn't need comments are always the ones who's code needs comments the most. And if reading other people's comments (or your old comments, cause you should really be commenting!!) bothers you that much, most editors have a "hide comments" options that you can click. Just don't blame me when I call you an idiot when you ask me a question that's answered by the comments you hid.

# ? Feb 5, 2017 16:09

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Agreed. I remember doing a code review for the architect who led the self commenting code brigade at work. He stared at his own code for 3 minutes and couldn't explain what a part of it was for or how he refactored it to that current form. The commit for it was "refactor"

# ? Feb 5, 2017 16:37

sunaurus: Feb 13, 2012; Oh great, another bookah.

I don't like the comments that developers in my team write. This is from a recent pull request:

Totally useless comments, and he clearly just copy-pasted them into a bunch of different classes and did a find and replace for the resource name ("Create a Address" must have originally been a comment for a different resource where it was at least a grammatically correct comment).

On the other hand, I don't mind a comment that explains WHY some code is the way it is.
Also, it's always interesting when I find comments in older code along the lines of "This was supposed to be just a POC. Sorry."

# ? Feb 5, 2017 17:02

Doghouse: Oct 22, 2004; I was playing Harvest Moon 64 with this kid who lived on my street and my cows were not doing well and I got so raged up and frustrated that my eyes welled up with tears and my friend was like are you crying dude. Are you crying because of the cows. I didn't understand the feeding mechanic.

Maybe its just the comments I've seen at my current position. Things like:

"For some reason the code throws an exception, this fixes it somehow"

"This is for TT 25434, per Brian Jones' request"

This one is almost verbatim:

//The "Donaldson special". For some users, GetThingie doesnt seem to work and its failure cant be explained. therefore we have to manually discover it

# ? Feb 5, 2017 17:10

lifg: Dec 4, 2000; <this tag left blank>; Muldoon

You'll never love comments as much as when you have to add a new report to a hastily-built Perl reporting module you haven't touched in three years, but there at the top is full POD documentation, including a section titled, "dear future self, this is how you add a new report."

# ? Feb 5, 2017 18:57

ToxicSlurpee: Nov 5, 2003; -=SEND HELP=-; Pillbug

rt4 posted:

Not at all. Short functions with verbose names paired with unit tests provide the most useful descriptions. Otherwise, you're just trying to compensate for awkward code in most cases. If there's some serious computer science or weird tricks going on, a link to an article might be helpful, I guess.

Even if the code is simple at a glance it's quicker to read a few short comments to the effect of "this does *thing*" than try to reason out what the code does by reading it. It's easier to comprehend natural language than code.

I think people that hate comments mostly have to deal with bad comments and let's be honest; basically none of us ever write enough good code documentation.

The most lacking thing is why the code was written in the first place especially in the case of some bizarre thing that looks weird

# ? Feb 5, 2017 19:37

huhu: Feb 24, 2006

Would love any comments on this resume and why it's terrible (or not).

removed.

huhu fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Feb 7, 2017

# ? Feb 6, 2017 05:39

CPColin: Sep 9, 2003; Big ol' smile.

You forgot to scrub your "For more projects" link.

# ? Feb 6, 2017 06:19

b0lt: Apr 29, 2005

huhu posted:

Would love any comments on this resume and why it's terrible (or not).

http://docdro.id/EKntNya

"Wrote python scripts to automate web tasks" is meaninglessly vague.
Verb tense disagreement in "Maintained website and update content regularly"

"Tracked all progress with Github repository" makes it seem like you don't understand the purpose of source control.
"Acquired hosting" doesn't really seem like something that's worth putting in your resume.

"Intro to Computers for Engineers" sounds like it's a class introducing you to web browsers and word processing.

Unless it's relevant (e.g. you were doing web development for a nonprofit), your volunteer experience probably isn't worth listing.

You should probably remove C++ from your resume. Listing HTML under web technologies is odd.
Are you conflating git and github? Listing an editor other than vim or emacs is dumb, it'll only make people look down upon you. It seems a bit ridiculous to list an ftp client in development tools.

# ? Feb 6, 2017 07:00

Grizzled Patriarch: Mar 27, 2014; These dentures won't stop me from tearing out jugulars in Thunderdome.

Dumb question time:

Is a Mac of some kind absolutely necessary for getting into coding? This looks like something I'd be really interested in, but it's hard to justify spending like $400+ minimum to find out. Some brief googling made it sound like it's possible to code on a PC, but that it's kind of a hassle and can be very frustrating, especially if things aren't working properly, and I'm worried that starting out that way would create some bad habits or weird approaches that wouldn't be doing me any favors later down the line.

I've seen a lot of recommendations for picking up a refurbed / older Mac mini - is that a good idea? It seems like it would be kinda inconvenient if you ever had to work on the fly, but I guess if it's a stepping stone while learning the ropes that probably doesn't matter.

# ? Feb 6, 2017 11:03

Illusive Fuck Man: Jul 5, 2004; RIP John McCain feel better xoxo ð ð; Taco Defender

Grizzled Patriarch posted:

Is a Mac of some kind absolutely necessary for getting into coding?

Not even remotely necessary, and anyone who implies that is insane. Just install visual studio or eclipse and find a good tutorial/online class for C++, c#, or Java. If you really need a unixlike environment for some reason, use a virtual machine.

# ? Feb 6, 2017 12:42

Tres Burritos: Sep 3, 2009

Grizzled Patriarch posted:

Dumb question time:

Is a Mac of some kind absolutely necessary for getting into coding? This looks like something I'd be really interested in, but it's hard to justify spending like $400+ minimum to find out. Some brief googling made it sound like it's possible to code on a PC, but that it's kind of a hassle and can be very frustrating, especially if things aren't working properly, and I'm worried that starting out that way would create some bad habits or weird approaches that wouldn't be doing me any favors later down the line.

I've seen a lot of recommendations for picking up a refurbed / older Mac mini - is that a good idea? It seems like it would be kinda inconvenient if you ever had to work on the fly, but I guess if it's a stepping stone while learning the ropes that probably doesn't matter.

Most of these are good and they all can run on linux/mac/windows.

# ? Feb 6, 2017 12:53

csammis: Aug 26, 2003; Mental Institution

Grizzled Patriarch posted:

Is a Mac of some kind absolutely necessary for getting into coding?
...
Some brief googling made it sound like it's possible to code on a PC, but that it's kind of a hassle and can be very frustrating, especially if things aren't working properly

2017.txt

# ? Feb 6, 2017 15:03

Pollyanna: Mar 5, 2005; Milk's on them.

Set up a customized VM and put together some dotfiles on Github and you're golden on PC.

# ? Feb 6, 2017 15:11

Ghost of Reagan Past: Oct 7, 2003; rock and roll fun

Grizzled Patriarch posted:

Dumb question time:

Is a Mac of some kind absolutely necessary for getting into coding? This looks like something I'd be really interested in, but it's hard to justify spending like $400+ minimum to find out. Some brief googling made it sound like it's possible to code on a PC, but that it's kind of a hassle and can be very frustrating, especially if things aren't working properly, and I'm worried that starting out that way would create some bad habits or weird approaches that wouldn't be doing me any favors later down the line.

I've seen a lot of recommendations for picking up a refurbed / older Mac mini - is that a good idea? It seems like it would be kinda inconvenient if you ever had to work on the fly, but I guess if it's a stepping stone while learning the ropes that probably doesn't matter.

Any computer works. Macs are trendy but they aren't better than any other option. Use what you have, don't worry about Silicon Valley hipsters and their Mac fetishism

# ? Feb 6, 2017 15:16

Bob Morales: Aug 18, 2006; ~~Just wear the fucking mask, Bob~~

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

piratepilates posted:

I've never had to interview people before, and I have no real way of telling if I have 3 years of experience or 1 year repeated three times.

What exactly are signs that differentiate the two? Like what really is someone with 10 1-year experiences like in an interview or a job?

Someone with 10 years experience but only knows 1 language, 1 database system, and everything they have ever made interacts with 1 system. Unless you're hiring them specifically to work with that one system. And for that they better know every detail about that fucker and not take 3 days to figure out a production bug, "Oh, it's a text field not a number!"

I had a guy on my team that has 15 years experience, was a lovely programmer, couldn't interact with Windows/Linux systems, didn't know how to use a loving database, all his programs were huge if/else clusterfucks. But he had 15 years experience. No debugging skills. He worked with an Access program almost every loving day but couldn't make a change in it to save his life much less write a new Access program from scratch. Same goes for the PHP shopping cart and customer portal we had for like 4 years. Couldn't even figure out what line it was crashing on. Never learned any kinds of scripting programs to make his life easier.

I promoted a helpdesk guy to replace him, who's learned Access, has a working knowledge of the IBM system the other guy 'knew', and has started learning PowerShell and Python. Just the other day he said "I would have tried to do this in Access a few months ago but this is so much easier", referring to a Python script I had him write.

# ? Feb 6, 2017 15:54

Munkeymon: Aug 14, 2003; Motherfucker's got an
armor-piercing crowbar! Rigoddamndicu𝜆ous.

Doghouse posted:

//The "Donaldson special"

Sounds like something you have to pay the pro extra for

Grizzled Patriarch posted:

Is a Mac of some kind absolutely necessary for getting into coding?

Oh my

# ? Feb 6, 2017 15:58

lunar detritus: May 6, 2009

Grizzled Patriarch posted:

Dumb question time:

Is a Mac of some kind absolutely necessary for getting into coding?

It's not necessary at all, and I'm saying this as someone who uses a mac for work. I think the experience is slightly better if you're doing web programming (and even then, only the html/css part of frontend) because everyone seems to be using Sketch and a lot of the related tools seem to be designed to be mac-first but I'm not sure it's $500 worth of difference. If you're doing any other kind of programming the point is moot.

# ? Feb 6, 2017 16:26

ExcessBLarg!: Sep 1, 2001

Grizzled Patriarch posted:

Is a Mac of some kind absolutely necessary for getting into coding?

Only if you're trying to write programs for a Mac or iOS.

# ? Feb 6, 2017 16:30

lifg: Dec 4, 2000; <this tag left blank>; Muldoon

Grizzled Patriarch posted:

Is a Mac of some kind absolutely necessary for getting into coding?

Now that you received answers to this question, can you tell us who put this idea in your head?

# ? Feb 6, 2017 16:44

Jarl: Nov 8, 2007; So what if I'm not for the ever offended?

Grizzled Patriarch posted:

Is a Mac of some kind absolutely necessary for getting into coding?

That is the most insane thing I have heard in a long time.

I think many developers prefer UNIX operating systems like Linux and OS X over Windows, but that is the closest I can get to that statement.

# ? Feb 6, 2017 17:44

denzelcurrypower: Jan 28, 2011

iOS is necessary to build projects for iPhone or Mac I'm pretty sure, but there's probably a way around that I'm not aware of and if not, it's not like you actually need mac hardware.

Might as well as now, what's the best way to edit/build/run iPhone app projects from a Windows environment? How about building to iPhone from Xamarin? Should I just set up a dual boot with iOS or is a virtual machine actually decent to work with?

# ? Feb 6, 2017 18:25

hobbesmaster: Jan 28, 2008

lifg posted:

Now that you received answers to this question, can you tell us who put this idea in your head?

I'm guessing he wanted to learn to write apps for his iPhone initially?

# ? Feb 6, 2017 18:29

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# ? May 31, 2024 05:46

smackfu: Jun 7, 2004

I think for corporate programming jobs, it comes from wanting a unix-like system plus needing something that can run Office and Outlook. A Mac is the preferred option in that case.

If I did not need to run Office, I could do everything in my job with a basic Linux box. (Docker would probably run better too.)

# ? Feb 6, 2017 18:30

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Newbie Programming Interviews/Get a Job Megathread: Fake it 'til you make it

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