4 ms·
I mean, if you're a novice, it should be your first thought. If it isn't, I consider that a failure of education. Jumping into writing something from scratch wh
by philipov 11y ago
I mean, if you're a novice, it should be your first thought. If it isn't, I consider that a failure of education. Jumping into writing something from scratch when you're not part of the target user group or know the target industry already is a great way to produce horrible code that you (or someone else) will hate to maintain.
This is why it's so important to grill your interviewers about the reality of working at the company, although I'll admit that I learned which questions to ask from bad experience. Asking those questions also happens to serve as excellent signalling to your technical interviewers, much more effective than being able to solve some silly logic puzzle.
And to be perfectly fair, you do learn so much from working on poorly written projects that are a horror to maintain. Failure teaches you which mistakes to avoid next time.
- jetcata 11y agoI'd love to hear which questions you ask in interviews to get this information out of the interviewers!
- philipov 11y agoAsk them the questions you'd want to know answers to if you were hiring them, to determine their own merits. Insist on talking with the people you'll actually be working with. You want to know their opinions on programming paradigms, and design patterns. Ask about operational details like version control, code review, and releases. Ask about the history of the code base, who wrote it, where are they now. Ask how documentation is created. There are so many things you can ask. Good code is surrounded by good processes. Ask about the processes that lead to good code. This not only susses out what the situation is on the ground, but also demonstrates your own quality.
- distracted828 11y ago> failure teaches you which mistakes to avoid next time As a recent grad who has been fired from two jobs, I would be afraid to join a poorly written project because I would worry that I would fail and then be fired. Learning how to be successful is pretty important and teaches you things you cannot learn from lurching from failure to failure.
- jschwartzi 11y agoEven the jobs with poorly-written codebases teach you a lot. Only they're teaching you through experience what is or isn't maintainable.
- distracted828 11y agoSure, but at a certain point, you need to learn a method to writing a maintainable codebase. Otherwise you never become capable of building a successful project.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- stuxnet79 11y agoHow did you fail?
- JSeymourATL 11y ago> I learned which questions to ask from bad experience. Would you mind sharing your best, most probing questions-- the one's that proved most useful cutting through corporate posturing and BS?