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You sound like my racist grandfather: "Those that favor Emacs, Vim etc tend to be rather different than those that use Visual Studio, etc." Yeah? How are they d

You sound like my racist grandfather: "Those that favor Emacs, Vim etc tend to be rather different than those that use Visual Studio, etc." Yeah? How are they different? O Great Arbiter of Skills, how did you come to this conclusion?

damnfine 9y ago
Honestly, while I would not stake a hiring decision on the distinction, I see quite a difference in the two. Comparing a coders chosen habits to racism is a huge stretch.
- LeoNatan25 9y ago
  That’s not what was compared. The comparison to racism was to the poster who said EMACS users are “different” from VS users.
david-cako 9y ago
Awareness of them alone indicates a greater interest in the field imo. It obviously wouldn't be a critical factor, but it's easy to tell how enthusiastic someone is about computers in general based on whether their familiarity with them ends at the outlines of their personal experience or domain. There's tons of ways to assess this -- interest in upcoming technologies, familiarity with linux/unix history, awareness of other tools, regardless of whether they use them, etc To me this seems like the OPPOSITE of trivia/whiteboard interviewing. The goal is to probe someone, not mark them down for every random thing they don't know about. Software absolutely seems like one such field where it's both easy and important to find people whose enthusiasm goes home with them.
- adjkant 9y ago
  I still think you'll end up selecting against a lot of great hires. Plenty of great programmers simply don't use vim/emacs, even if aware of them. The question didn't seem to be about awareness but rather about experience. I am aware of both and actively choose not to use either - I use nano if it's ever easiest to edit a file on the terminal, and otherwise, stick to IDE's and things like Sublime/Atom. It's really popular in the startup world to care deeply about enthusiasm about the subject at home, but a lot of these litmus tests won't consistently hit that. Even though you may generally get better programmers on average through these types of screens and companies are free to hire as they please when it comes to this, it seems rather unfair to a good programmer who simply likes to do other things in their spare time. Requiring programmers that live and breathe CS makes it feel much more exploitative.

damnfine 9y ago

Honestly, while I would not stake a hiring decision on the distinction, I see quite a difference in the two. Comparing a coders chosen habits to racism is a huge stretch.

LeoNatan25 9y ago
That’s not what was compared. The comparison to racism was to the poster who said EMACS users are “different” from VS users.

david-cako 9y ago

Awareness of them alone indicates a greater interest in the field imo. It obviously wouldn't be a critical factor, but it's easy to tell how enthusiastic someone is about computers in general based on whether their familiarity with them ends at the outlines of their personal experience or domain. There's tons of ways to assess this -- interest in upcoming technologies, familiarity with linux/unix history, awareness of other tools, regardless of whether they use them, etc To me this seems like the OPPOSITE of trivia/whiteboard interviewing. The goal is to probe someone, not mark them down for every random thing they don't know about. Software absolutely seems like one such field where it's both easy and important to find people whose enthusiasm goes home with them.

adjkant 9y ago
I still think you'll end up selecting against a lot of great hires. Plenty of great programmers simply don't use vim/emacs, even if aware of them. The question didn't seem to be about awareness but rather about experience. I am aware of both and actively choose not to use either - I use nano if it's ever easiest to edit a file on the terminal, and otherwise, stick to IDE's and things like Sublime/Atom. It's really popular in the startup world to care deeply about enthusiasm about the subject at home, but a lot of these litmus tests won't consistently hit that. Even though you may generally get better programmers on average through these types of screens and companies are free to hire as they please when it comes to this, it seems rather unfair to a good programmer who simply likes to do other things in their spare time. Requiring programmers that live and breathe CS makes it feel much more exploitative.