4 ms·

I will tell you, that if you are in a job interview with a live-coding portion, if you don't type fast, the interviewer will probably think you are dumb. And i

I will tell you, that if you are in a job interview with a live-coding portion, if you don't type fast, the interviewer will probably think you are dumb. And if you don't know all the hot keys they know, then they will probably think you are ignorant. It's unfair, but happens.

pmorici 10y ago
Their loss.
xapata 10y ago
One of the best programmers I know types surprisingly slowly. Maybe because he's older and his fingers just don't move very fast.
- ktRolster 10y ago
  There's a story of Donald Knuth and the programming contest: “In the early days of Silicon Valley, there was an annual programming contest on Memorial Day. When Donald Knuth (the world’s greatest programmer) entered, they gave him an old batch computer to work on. He had to carry punch cards back and forth. The others, great programmers of the time like Alan Kay, John McCarthy; got the ‘modern’ time-sharing systems. “Donald Knuth had that old, punch card computer, but finished his program an hour before anyone else, and his algorithm was the fastest executing. They asked him how he did it so well, and he said, `With that kind of computer, you think carefully before typing. You don’t want to make mistakes, like carving in stone.” Sounds like your old programming friend has learned that lesson.
  - tigershark 10y ago
    Programming is more like modelling clay rather than carving stone. You can, and you should, always slowly reshape your creation until you are satisfied with the result. If you are carving stone there is no way that you can change it without destroying everything and starting again. You may be faster just using a lot of time thinking before writing the code, but you will never see the real essence that is revealed only while you are continuously moulding your creation. To me it always happens that after days or weeks or even months that I don't look at some part of my code I find a better way of doing it. One way that would have never been apparent without the code being in that current form.
    - ktRolster 10y ago
      Eh, I'm not sure you got the point of the story. Good argument, though.
RhodesianHunter 10y ago
Good, these are perfect indicators that I don't want to work with these people anyway.
- ktRolster 10y ago
  Edit: misunderstanding.
  - 0xffff2 10y ago
    I think GP is saying precisely the opposite. They don't want to work with managers that judge their employees by WPM or hotkey knowledge.
  - civility 10y ago
    > You don't want to work with people who type slowly? Pretty sure he meant it the other way. He doesn't want to work with people who would judge him for typing slowly.
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- taneq 10y ago
  It depends on whether the interviewee is using a piece of software that they claim to know. If they're calling themselves a senior dev and they use the mouse to select "save" instead of using ctrl+s, then I probably won't hire them. On the other hand, if they're doing a coding test in Linux and they claim no CLI experience, they won't lose any marks at all for asking how to launch a text editor.
  - collyw 10y ago
    I struggle when using my colleague's Mac, using the same IDE as my own machine. Mainly because the keyboard layout is different.
pjc50 10y ago
Maybe it's just because I'm a C programmer, but I don't think my typing-to-thinking ratio has ever been above 1:2 and is more like 1:10 when actually programming. And very little of that is actually words. In Visual Studio C# land, long identifiers are compensated by really good autocomplete. Most of the characters on screen aren't hand-typed. Frankly, if we're going to have computer-aided-software-engineering then the computer can damn well do the typing too.
taytus 10y ago
That's totally cool. An interview is a two way street. Maybe we are just not a good fit. And that's totally cool.

pmorici 10y ago

Their loss.

xapata 10y ago

One of the best programmers I know types surprisingly slowly. Maybe because he's older and his fingers just don't move very fast.

ktRolster 10y ago
There's a story of Donald Knuth and the programming contest: “In the early days of Silicon Valley, there was an annual programming contest on Memorial Day. When Donald Knuth (the world’s greatest programmer) entered, they gave him an old batch computer to work on. He had to carry punch cards back and forth. The others, great programmers of the time like Alan Kay, John McCarthy; got the ‘modern’ time-sharing systems. “Donald Knuth had that old, punch card computer, but finished his program an hour before anyone else, and his algorithm was the fastest executing. They asked him how he did it so well, and he said, `With that kind of computer, you think carefully before typing. You don’t want to make mistakes, like carving in stone.” Sounds like your old programming friend has learned that lesson.
- tigershark 10y ago
  Programming is more like modelling clay rather than carving stone. You can, and you should, always slowly reshape your creation until you are satisfied with the result. If you are carving stone there is no way that you can change it without destroying everything and starting again. You may be faster just using a lot of time thinking before writing the code, but you will never see the real essence that is revealed only while you are continuously moulding your creation. To me it always happens that after days or weeks or even months that I don't look at some part of my code I find a better way of doing it. One way that would have never been apparent without the code being in that current form.
  - ktRolster 10y ago
    Eh, I'm not sure you got the point of the story. Good argument, though.

RhodesianHunter 10y ago

Good, these are perfect indicators that I don't want to work with these people anyway.

ktRolster 10y ago
Edit: misunderstanding.
- 0xffff2 10y ago
  I think GP is saying precisely the opposite. They don't want to work with managers that judge their employees by WPM or hotkey knowledge.
- civility 10y ago
  > You don't want to work with people who type slowly? Pretty sure he meant it the other way. He doesn't want to work with people who would judge him for typing slowly.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
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taneq 10y ago
It depends on whether the interviewee is using a piece of software that they claim to know. If they're calling themselves a senior dev and they use the mouse to select "save" instead of using ctrl+s, then I probably won't hire them. On the other hand, if they're doing a coding test in Linux and they claim no CLI experience, they won't lose any marks at all for asking how to launch a text editor.
- collyw 10y ago
  I struggle when using my colleague's Mac, using the same IDE as my own machine. Mainly because the keyboard layout is different.

pjc50 10y ago

Maybe it's just because I'm a C programmer, but I don't think my typing-to-thinking ratio has ever been above 1:2 and is more like 1:10 when actually programming. And very little of that is actually words. In Visual Studio C# land, long identifiers are compensated by really good autocomplete. Most of the characters on screen aren't hand-typed. Frankly, if we're going to have computer-aided-software-engineering then the computer can damn well do the typing too.

taytus 10y ago

That's totally cool. An interview is a two way street. Maybe we are just not a good fit. And that's totally cool.