Ayende @ Rahien

Ayende Rahien commented on If Program I Can't, Programmer Am I?

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 17:36:37 GMT

If only... I would have more success with them, at least they would know a mountain from a chair

Robert commented on If Program I Can't, Programmer Am I?

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 17:32:51 GMT

Are you sure you are not interviewing Geography students by mistake? It amuses me how some people get really touchy about asking programmers to program in an interview. Like you say the objective of the test is to pick out the bad ones, not the good. Anyone can lie on a CV.

hmm commented on If Program I Can't, Programmer Am I?

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 09:41:25 GMT

Could I use Rebol language?: reversed-string: head reverse string-to-reverse or if I don't want to modify original: reversed-string: head reverse copy string-to-reverse

Ayende Rahien commented on If Program I Can't, Programmer Am I?

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 20:57:15 GMT

@Nate, No, these type of questions won't find good programmers. They _would_ find the really bad ones, and that is there purposes, to screen the ones that aren't really programmers from those that can make one end of the compiler from the other. Frankly, I would have much harder time explaining abstract concepts than writing a bit of code to do such a simple task.

Nate commented on If Program I Can't, Programmer Am I?

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 20:37:42 GMT

You people are foolish if you think that such questions help you find skilled programmers or good thinkers Look at some of the code they have written in the past. Discuss concepts. Dumb ass pop quizzes are useless and if the person is nervous, then you have lost a potentially valuable asset.

Bill Pierce commented on If Program I Can't, Programmer Am I?

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 19:40:37 GMT

Was curious how M$ would reverse a string in .Net 1.1. This comes out of Microsoft.VisualBasic.Strings.StrReverse: string reverseThis = "test"; char[] array = reverseThis.ToCharArray(); Array.Reverse(array); string reversed = new string(array); Realize the goal is not to find out if the candidate knows how to reverse a string. I can't recall a business requirement in a system I have worked on that said we need to reverse the user's input. I would almost prefer that the candidate DID NOT know how to reverse a string so they can demonstrate their thought process for solving a problem.

Ayende Rahien commented on If Program I Can't, Programmer Am I?

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 18:49:59 GMT

I wish I were kidding, I have met people that are supposed to be "veteran professionals" that can't do it. You can probably guess that they aren't on my team, nor employed at my company in any development capacity.

Oren Ellenbogen commented on If Program I Can't, Programmer Am I?

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 18:27:47 GMT

Man, you are killing me :). If she\he can't reverse a string or capialize every second character, she\he in the wrong business. This is a no-brainer question. We are dealing with much more complicated scenarios on a daily basis so if she\he can not give me an answer within 2 minutes and smile("is this question for real?! he's kidding.. right?) while they are writing it, I don't want her\him on my team.

Harald commented on If Program I Can't, Programmer Am I?

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 17:17:57 GMT

LOL, that remembers me on an interview I had back then (where I was the Interviewee) where I was asked how to swap the contents of two registers without allocating a third one for buffering. The interviewer mentioned, that it took him quite a while to figure out how to do that and somehow he didn't even expect me to answer. When I came up with a solution he didn't believe me and tried arguing with me why my proposal won't work. Luckily I got support from a second guy attending the interview, though listening to his arguments a bit longer would definitely have been funny.

Ayende Rahien commented on If Program I Can't, Programmer Am I?

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 12:49:39 GMT

Cool information, when Linq will be out, it would be the time to the next challenge, capitalize every second character.

Alex Henderson commented on If Program I Can't, Programmer Am I?

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 11:08:27 GMT

Sorry, the Reverse comes from System.Query as an Extension Method ;o) (because a string is IEnumerable) It's a terrible terrible way to do it... I can only imagine the Reverse collects all characters internally as a stack and then feeds them back out again via a yield in reverse order (unless it's optimised for string types) - and then I imagine they probably get collected into yet another list before being converted into an array... lots of needless memory allocation. Would need to fire up reflector and have a look to be sure of course. Perhaps once LINQ is in the wild you'll start to have candidates who try it this way because "Reverse" shows up in intelisense for a string.... :P

Darius Damalakas commented on If Program I Can't, Programmer Am I?

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 10:19:00 GMT

Last time i gave a candidate to write a Fibonacci queue. It took him 15 minutes to write 5 simple statements, all of which where assignment. And then he started me exaplining the algorithm orally, drawing some things on the whiteboards and telling me that we need to use he some simple loop. After i repeatedly asked him write down the solution, he gave up.

Ayende Rahien commented on If Program I Can't, Programmer Am I?

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 09:24:57 GMT

Alex, I had to use brace matching to figure it out, but string doesn't have a Reverse() method on it.

Alex Henderson commented on If Program I Can't, Programmer Am I?

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 09:20:00 GMT

Yeah, it's surprising how many coders still go to work to eat their lunch... surely there are other industries to get into (for more money) if your really not passionate about it?!! string reversed = new string(((args ?? new string[] {""})[0] ?? "").Reverse().ToArray());

Ayende Rahien commented on If Program I Can't, Programmer Am I?

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 07:22:53 GMT

@Luke, Where do I find this people? Trying hiring people that directly from the market, (meaning not through friends and such). Even when getting screened candidates, I run into those depressingly often.

Ayende Rahien commented on If Program I Can't, Programmer Am I?

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 07:17:30 GMT

Ah, you already got the first hurdle. I saw some people getting stack on THAT for a while. The kept trying to reverse the string using the args variable. I meant reversing the string in args[0].

Luke Breuer commented on If Program I Can't, Programmer Am I?

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 02:16:37 GMT

@shawn: Confusing questions can be a good thing. Just as you picked up upon the ambiguity, so should an interviewee. @Ayende: Where do you find these people? I'm not saying that I had a whole lot of faith in the human race already, but this is just disheartening. At least this gives me a competitive edge...

shawn hinsey commented on If Program I Can't, Programmer Am I?

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 01:22:02 GMT

That question is kind of confusing. Do you mean to print the contents of the args array in reverse, the contents of an arbitrary index of the args array in reverse, or maybe the contents of every index in the array in reverse?