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Most of this is good, but one real WTF: "Editor Flailing It’s funny how many people can’t edit text on any machine but their own. I tend to interview people o
by larkeith 7y ago
Most of this is good, but one real WTF:
"Editor Flailing
It’s funny how many people can’t edit text on any machine but their own. I tend to interview people on a laptop running Ubuntu, and I open gedit for them to use, with the offer that they can use any other Unix editor they like. Most can barely navigate gedit, and it’s stupid simple.
Don’t ever let yourself get hung up on the editor. If you can’t figure out the magic command keys to indent code the way you like, just press the damn space bar and indent it yourself. Flailing in the editor wastes time."
Talk about an arbitrary condition. Sure, being adaptable and/or pragmatic with respect to tooling is a nice thing for your candidate to have, but to prioritize it at a similar level to knowing what your company does?! Are you really going to hire the incompetent-but-familiar-with-emacs Linux user over the capable-but-rigid Windows dev? Unless you're looking for an SA or full-stack dev, this seems rather arbitrary, especially considering the availability of plenty of cross-platform, fully-featured editors.
- emidln 7y agoThis is a great reason to learn vi for basic editing tasks. It's everywhere. Even if you typically use a different editor/ide, vi is a common ground. Disclosure: I'm an emacs user
- SOLAR_FIELDS 7y agoIt’s kind of weird to NOT know basic vi/vim if you get to a certain point in your career. If you can’t at least open the software, go into insert mode, and save/quit, have you ever had to ssh into a remote server and edit a config file before? Only excuse I could think of is if you literally did everything in windows for your entire career.
- npstr 7y agoWhat's wrong with using nano for that?
- MayeulC 7y ago> It's everywhere. It almost litterally is. Even busybox contains a vi clone. While I have encountered more systems without nano nor Emacs than I can remember. Plus, there is no excuse for learning the basic set of commands: i,ESC,x,u, and maybe navigating with the letters (which I'm not proficient at).
- GordonS 7y agoI only have to edit a file on Linux once every couple of months of so - I tired of forgetting how to exit vi (or enter/exit edit mode, save the file... just about anything really), so started installing nano as the first thing I do on any system. Nano is so much more obvious than vi.
- GordonS 7y agoAlso, there's a reason why there are so many "can't quit vi" memes.
- loopbit 7y agoReading the comments about vi... Am I the only one that knows/uses ZZ to save and quit?
- MayeulC 7y agoAs I tend not quit vi that often compared to the time I spend inside, I prefer to use the more explicit version. I have made some mistakes in the past typing `^X-O` in nano instead of `^X-N` because of muscle memory, thereby overwriting a file I didn't want, and I am afraid of repeating this if `ZZ` became part of my muscle memory.
- nemetroid 7y agoMost people can't install arbitrary software on every system they access.
- leadingthenet 7y agoYeap. Even the hard-core Emacs fanboys at my work know a few basic vi/vim commands. I mean, you're almost certainly going to use it at some point in your career, might as well learn "i -> type something -> :wq" at the very least.
- noir_lord 7y agoBeen using Linux since the 90's and opening, editing and saving is exactly what I know in vi. All that does is remind me that I haven't set nano as the default editor on that box and then I move on.
- izacus 7y agoIs it? There's plenty of amazing engineers and systems architects who develop (gasp!) on Windows and don't even use command line. And many many of those have designed highly reliable systems driving your basic infrastructure, power plants, industrial systems and myriad of other systems. Why on earth is knowing an old editor connected to anything useful you need from a person in a job?
- AdrianB1 7y agoHonestly I don't know a single good Windows guy that don't even use command line, there are basic things like ping, tracert, curl and openssl that you run in a command prompt. This is assuming you can get around using powershell.
- scarface74 7y agoPing and tracert sure. But curl? I’ll use Postman for quick sanity checking and I’ve never had a reason to use OpenSSL
- yoz-y 7y agoKnowing vi basics is useful, I agree. However, for interviews I really don't think that putting a candidate who is not familiar with it is a nice thing to do. Any modeless editor should not cause trouble but vi (especially) is quite pernicious and the candidate would be just losing time.
- panpanna 7y agoIt's a very easy way to find the 0.5x engineer. But I agree, it should not be a show stopper. (Emacs and vscode user here)
- yoz-y 7y agoI believe todays programming field is vast enough that you can actually have a really good engineer that never needed to touch a command line editor. An iOS or android developer with 8 years of experience for example. Other front-end positions too. I love vi and set it as editing mode everywhere, nevertheless I accept that it might not be something people actively seek. If I was looking for a unix server admin then I would definitely assume they know vi.
- walshemj 7y agonot for realy good Engineer in my book.
- detaro 7y agoWhy is "unix server administration in an environment that doesn't have other options" such a critical skill for all engineers? Or why else is vim experience required? Sure, many are going to have it, but it doesn't mean anything in itself.
- prepend 7y agoI don’t consider vi to be a system admin tool only. While I don’t think vi is a showstopper, it would certainly be curious how a mid to senior engineer wouldn’t know how to use insert and quit in vi. This would make me think that a Windows only background never even meant connecting to a shell and having to view a file. I’ve experienced lots of app developers who only use an IDE and don’t know how code is deployed or runs so they’ve never debugged a deployment, ever. They are in a big enough environment where that’s someone else’s job and they never have to talk with them. That’s perfectly cool and folks will make a living and retiring in that world. But I don’t typically hire too many of those because I work in cross functional teams where the windows devs have to at least be able to understand and communicate with the Linux devs, and vice versa. That means having basic user level skills like two commands in vi, because it is almost always available on Unix systems. And frequently the only one allowed. I think folks confuse this as meaning that people who don’t know vi are dumb, they aren’t. They could be geniuses who just don’t need to know vi. But for many types of interviews, it’s a super easy screening question that makes me follow up with more questions if they answer “I have to google.” It would be similar if a developer didn’t know cd or had never seen notepad or something.
- walshemj 7y agoPity I cant upvote you more than once, everyone who works on a unix system should know the basics of vi. And I would argue that you could apply that to all programmers
- verbify 7y agoIt's everywhere if you're on unix systems. Windows devs have little exposure to it.
- sys_64738 7y agoI think vi is the de-facto install of an editor on any non-Windows machine. You can't assume any other as vi in its simplest form is extremely lightweight and prevalent.
- rootsofallevil 7y agoGet them coding on a whiteboard, problem solved :)
- SamReidHughes 7y agoI don’t know, I’ve found in my experience with some people that being only able to operate productively in a very particular setup is a real negative signal. And you’re giving the article a very inaccurate reading.
- hdra 7y agoI think thats what the article is trying to say with that second paragraph. Don't worry about how to use the editor the "right" way and just focus on the getting the code to work with whats available, which he pretty much confirmed in the third paragraph by mentioning how he hired someone who struggled with the editor but got the job done anyway.
- meuk 7y agoLetting a windows programmer use vi in an interview is just cruel. I mean, I like vim after months of practice, but just exiting vi(m) is notoriously hard for a newbie.
- saagarjha 7y agoBeing able to use vim at a basic level doesn't really take all that long to learn. Sure, there's the memes about vim being impossible to escape, but it's really not that hard to learn how to do so.
- em-bee 7y agothe cruel part is that it adds to the candidates nervousness. so i avoid that, but otherwise i agree, especially if it is a modern version where arrow keys and backspace work in insert mode, so one doesn't even need to use command mode to make corrections.
- thrax 7y agoI learned vi by being too lazy to change my default editor in git..
- saltminer 7y agoI'd agree if they were forced to use vi, but it seems like vi is just an option. >I open gedit for them to use, with the offer that they can use any other Unix editor they like. I wonder if he required using vi when that Windows programmer interviewed or if the Windows guy chose to use vi.
- ex_amazon_sde 7y ago> Talk about an arbitrary condition. I've interviewed a lot of people in Amazon and always offered choice between at least 4 editors. If you cannot pass a coding challenge the problem is not in the editor. Did you read the next sentence? The Windows guy that chose to use vi was hired.
- nat 7y agoAs someone spending a large amount of their week doing interviews these days, I really empathize with the spirit of this article. I've expressed an annoyance very similar to this one many times before - it's astounding how many nominally senior programmers are not adept at manipulating text. If you've been writing a lot of software, I would expect you to be good at actually putting the characters into a file and moving them around therein. I would be very suspicious of someone who claimed to be a master carpenter but couldn't drive a nail cleanly. Muscle memory is a real thing, and the mechanics of a task matter. What is the point of all our fetishization of editors and keyboards and such if not to smooth the transition between brain and paper? This isn't even always a matter of candidates operating in an unfamiliar environment. Even on their own personal computers, in the editor they presumably use for work, I see a lot of flailing.
- sys_64738 7y agoThis sounds like you're suffering from interview burn out to me. If you have a condescending voice towards interviewees outside interviews then it is usually a manifestation of how you perceive them in the interviews. Do yourself and the candidates a favor and step back from it to allow yourself to lose such prejudices.