3 ms·

I agree w/ you here. And I think a lot of people have some personal experiences encountering this kind of situation. It seems baffling, right? And yet, you hav

by speby 8y ago

I agree w/ you here. And I think a lot of people have some personal experiences encountering this kind of situation. It seems baffling, right? And yet, you have to really wonder ... what did that person do writing firmware for the space shuttle? Did they really do that? Or did they somehow lose their mind after they left and now couldn't do a simple set of modulus operations on a FizzBuzz test? How can that happen? Even reading this kind of thing makes me totally scratch my head.

collyw 8y ago
Brain freeze under interview conditions? One thing that I have noticed is that taking in an interview seems to engage a different part of your mind from coding. I get quite into the flow of chatting, then have to jump into code. Its quite a context switch. Plus the pressure of someone staring at you. Then you feel stupid for not answering straight away. The you get self conscious and start doubting yourself. What was the question again? I don't think there is anything especially unusual about it at all.
stevenwoo 8y ago
Off the top of my head the space shuttle firmware was written by a team that adherred to a very systemic process to ensure it met the spec/reduce the number of bugs, it was often cited in old software engineering papers/books in the time period as the best organization in the world, IIRC in terms of software engineering measurements like defects per lines of code. It would be important to know if someone came from that at the beginning of the space shuttle program when they were creating the standards for work, starting out or if they came on later after the process had been perfected. I worked in a different contractor in NASA/Clear Lake at the time but even before I read those papers the organization responsible for the shuttle firmware was held in the highest regard.

3 ms·

I agree w/ you here. And I think a lot of people have some personal experiences encountering this kind of situation. It seems baffling, right? And yet, you hav

by speby 8y ago

collyw 8y ago
Brain freeze under interview conditions? One thing that I have noticed is that taking in an interview seems to engage a different part of your mind from coding. I get quite into the flow of chatting, then have to jump into code. Its quite a context switch. Plus the pressure of someone staring at you. Then you feel stupid for not answering straight away. The you get self conscious and start doubting yourself. What was the question again? I don't think there is anything especially unusual about it at all.
stevenwoo 8y ago
Off the top of my head the space shuttle firmware was written by a team that adherred to a very systemic process to ensure it met the spec/reduce the number of bugs, it was often cited in old software engineering papers/books in the time period as the best organization in the world, IIRC in terms of software engineering measurements like defects per lines of code. It would be important to know if someone came from that at the beginning of the space shuttle program when they were creating the standards for work, starting out or if they came on later after the process had been perfected. I worked in a different contractor in NASA/Clear Lake at the time but even before I read those papers the organization responsible for the shuttle firmware was held in the highest regard.