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Language quirks are the worst thing to ask in an interview. Please don't do it, it's barely a step above memorization.

marcell 8y ago
That’s not true. If you have ten years experience with Python, but don’t know about, say, @property decorators or how variable scoping works, that raises some red flags.
camjohnson26 8y ago
On the other hand if a candidate has been coding a language for a long time and doesn’t know the quirks that could be a red flag
lawnchair_larry 8y ago
I think it depends how you do it. When I interview, part of what I do is try to find quirks that they know about, but not count the ones they don’t know about against them. I think you can quickly get a sense of depth, potential, curiosity, and passion if you can get them talking about quirks and their opinions on those quirks. For example, if someone says that they once attached a debugger to the JVM to confirm a pathological issue arising from benign looking Java code and found that the JIT compiler falls apart when a certain construct is used, I’m probably going to hire that person, even if we have no Java code in the company - assuming I can also confirm that they are productive and don’t just waste time going down deep rabbit holes.
- chillacy 8y ago
  How has that been working out for you? I used to think the same and I'd ask a "programming passion question" right before a simple coding question, and then I'd run into these amazing bullshitters who could talk shop but couldn't write fizzbuzz. But they'd come up with a bunch of excuses as they were writing the code as to why ("oh my company uses this other framework so I forgot how to write a for loop"). So sadly I stopped paying attention to that part. I only ask it to make the candidate comfortable before we dive into code.
  - lawnchair_larry 8y ago
    Nobody who can go into that level of detail doesn’t know what a for loop is.
    - chillacy 8y ago
      It seems you're doubting my story. Maybe you think my threshold for "that level of detail" isn't sufficient, or whatever candidate sourcing we use doesn't filter these people out.
james_s_tayler 8y ago
I think it's ok to flip the script and ask what a candidates favorite language quirk is or if they have a story relating to a language quirk. In my experience curious developers who like to dive deep light up and love discussing that kind of stuff. Testing random trivia is dumb.

That’s not true. If you have ten years experience with Python, but don’t know about, say, @property decorators or how variable scoping works, that raises some red flags.

camjohnson26 8y ago

On the other hand if a candidate has been coding a language for a long time and doesn’t know the quirks that could be a red flag

lawnchair_larry 8y ago

I think it depends how you do it. When I interview, part of what I do is try to find quirks that they know about, but not count the ones they don’t know about against them. I think you can quickly get a sense of depth, potential, curiosity, and passion if you can get them talking about quirks and their opinions on those quirks. For example, if someone says that they once attached a debugger to the JVM to confirm a pathological issue arising from benign looking Java code and found that the JIT compiler falls apart when a certain construct is used, I’m probably going to hire that person, even if we have no Java code in the company - assuming I can also confirm that they are productive and don’t just waste time going down deep rabbit holes.

chillacy 8y ago
How has that been working out for you? I used to think the same and I'd ask a "programming passion question" right before a simple coding question, and then I'd run into these amazing bullshitters who could talk shop but couldn't write fizzbuzz. But they'd come up with a bunch of excuses as they were writing the code as to why ("oh my company uses this other framework so I forgot how to write a for loop"). So sadly I stopped paying attention to that part. I only ask it to make the candidate comfortable before we dive into code.
- lawnchair_larry 8y ago
  Nobody who can go into that level of detail doesn’t know what a for loop is.
  - chillacy 8y ago
    It seems you're doubting my story. Maybe you think my threshold for "that level of detail" isn't sufficient, or whatever candidate sourcing we use doesn't filter these people out.

james_s_tayler 8y ago

I think it's ok to flip the script and ask what a candidates favorite language quirk is or if they have a story relating to a language quirk. In my experience curious developers who like to dive deep light up and love discussing that kind of stuff. Testing random trivia is dumb.