4 ms·

Bullshit. It'll go like this: Interviewer: here, a laptop with vi Applicant: I've never used vi Interviewer: just hit "i" to be dropped into insert mode, the

Bullshit. It'll go like this: Interviewer: here, a laptop with vi Applicant: I've never used vi Interviewer: just hit "i" to be dropped into insert mode, then just navigate with the arrows and use backspace like in any other editor. Ask me when you're ready to save and I'll teach you the magic incantation. Applicant: types away If you're not able to code in what's essentially just a test box then that's a useful thing for an interviewer to know. It's a strong indication that you don't fully grasp where the editor stops and the language begins, and unless you're applying for a junior role that's a negative sign.

ubercow13 7y ago
Have you seen some of the other comments in this thread? Seems like there's a good chance it would be more like: Interviewer: here, a laptop with vi Applicant: I've never used vi Interviewer: ....
- unknownkadath 7y ago
  Applicant: I prefer emacs Interviewer: REPENT, SINNER!
  - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
    Eliminate My Application, Continue Searching
- westmeal 7y ago
  vi vi vi is the number of the DEviL!
inferiorhuman 7y ago
just hit "i" to be dropped into insert mode, then just navigate with the arrows and use backspace like in any other editor. Yeah maybe. The default vi config that comes with FreeBSD will get out of insert mode if you use the arrow keys to go beyond the end of the line (and maybe some other situations I've forgotten). Editors are extremely personal, there's a pretty good reason that vi vs emacs is one of the eternal flame wars. I would absolutely expect a bit of discomfort and less proficiency with a different computer and a different keyboard. And, quite frankly, I'd be pretty put off by an interviewer who expected I'd hit the ground running with neither apprehension nor mistakes on someone else's computer.
- sureaboutthis 7y ago
  > The default vi config that comes with FreeBSD will get out of insert mode if you use the arrow keys to go beyond the end of the line No it doesn't.
  - inferiorhuman 7y ago
    No it doesn't. I checked before I made the post on a FreeBSD 12 machine. The stock vi on OSX (vim 8) behaves more "normally".
    - sureaboutthis 7y ago
      I'm on FreeBSD 12 now. No it doesn't. And vim is not vi but vim doesn't do that either.
      - inferiorhuman 7y ago
        Dunno what to tell you. At a prompt, running vi and entering the following keys: i a b c [right arrow] d e f results in vi displaying the text: ab Note that the key f generates a bell as vi is no longer in insert/append mode. If you're seeing different behavior I can only assume you've got wildly different terminal settings, you've configured vi and forgot about it, or have aliased vi to vim or some vi variant from ports. Either way that lends credence to the idea that judging someone for being uncomfortable at a vi prompt is a bad way to interview candidates.
        skrebbel 7y ago
        I have absolutely no vi knowledge. I just opened an ssh to a vanilla Ubuntu install (digital ocean droplet), tried what you wrote, and I got: abcdef I've been accidentally dropped into vi on countless systems and never have my ability to type "i" and "ESC :wq" (the full extent of my vi skills) failed me. I'm super confused by your comment.
hluska 7y ago
Walking into an interview, being given vi and told to write code would be a horrible experience. Expecting someone to grasp a dramatically different editor with interview jitters is unfair. Frankly, that’s the kind of behaviour that would be a massive red flag for me - it would absolutely lead me to reject any position I was offered.
- folkhack 7y ago
  Agree. I'm perfectly capable at vi and I'd probably just walk because it shows total arrogance on the interviewer's part. Anecdotal - I use zsh, with the bureau theme - pretty obvious it's not just a bash shell. During a more operations-focused interview I had someone ask me if he could use bash because he wasn't very familiar with zsh and would like to work with a known tool. Super competent guy. I thought it was a perfectly reasonable request.
  - inferiorhuman 7y ago
    Additionally vi is so configurable that one may be intimately familiar with their own vi configuration but really awkward with the stock (or interviewer's) configuration.
    - folkhack 7y ago
      > Additionally vi is so configurable that one may be intimately familiar with their own vi configuration Didn't even think of that - you could totally say the same about my Sublime editor =D People are comfortable with their own tools and I don't like putting candidates into a corner with what they're using.
trickstra 7y ago
If the task was "write me a basic function that adds two numbers" then sure, editor doesn't matter, anyone with basic understanding of the language must absolutely be able to do that without google. But that's not the task they use for interviews. It's gonna be something like one special scenario of an abstract academic problem that you will never encounter in a high traffic website project. You either shouldn't need to code it and the thought process should be enough for the purpose of the interview, or you need to think and focus really hard, and being constantly distracted by an editor that doesn't do what you expected, because you have a muscle memory for your own keyboard shortcuts totally ruins that. The result is that your performance in this task has nothing in common with your performance in the job.
TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
"I've never driven a semi before." "NEXT! Obviously you just can't drive, your claim that you were a professional Formula 1 driver is a complete fabrication, and worse, you're clearly bone idle and don't want to learn anything new."
scarface74 7y ago
I’ve programmed professionally for over 20 years gotten paid to program in more than a half a dozen languages and before that I learned how to program on an Apple //e by typing: CALL -151 ! To get to the built in mini assembler. But if you insist on me using Vi, an editor I’ve never used and I get dinged for that, it tells me a lot about your company and I will move on to the other 6 or 7 interviews I have lined up. Your company is not that special.
ericol 7y ago
> just hit "i" to be dropped into insert mode, then just navigate with the arrows and use backspace like in any other editor. Yeah, no. Let me call bullshit on you calling bullshit. I've been working as a mediocre programmer at the same company for the last 10 years. when I landed this job, I had never ever even heard of vi. I was "gently" introduced to it by my boss, and eventually got to kind of get used to a basic usage of it. But in the box where our server run it is configured to highlight syntax, maintain tabs and shit, delete deletes, you can move using arrow keys, and a slew of other non default niceties. Over the years I more or less got acquainted with different tastes of Linux, and used and installed it in a few of my own boxes (Debian, mostly). Even thought vi respects arrow keys by default now it seems (thanks god I don't have to use hjkl. It is hjkl, right?) there's this conf issue that I've never been able to fix _because I don't know how to formulated the question in order to google it_ and it's the fact that when you're in non edit mode, _the cursor never goes to the end of the line_, so if I have to let's say add a new line, and the last word is `return;` I have to convert that to `return;;` put the line jump between the 2 ;; and then remove the extra ;. Plus, arrow keys in non edit mode add lines with crap in it. I can't even fathom how stressfull would be doing a job interview under this circumstances. Force a person to use a different OS than they are used to? Well, may be. Even thought I don't like nano, it would be a better choice than vi because at least it beheaves as a "normal" editor. force a person to use vi with default settings? thank you very much for your time.
- toyg 7y ago
  I had your same problem for years (I use vi extremely sparingly) and the answer is “a” - which means “append”: it will go to the end of the line and leave you in insert mode after the last character. Found out when I was looking for something else, and improved my quality of life quite a bit. (I still hate distributions where arrow keys in insert mode don’t work like any reasonable human would expect, but they are thankfully getting thinner on the ground).
  - PascLeRasc 7y ago
    Thanks, I always thought hitting $+i+right arrow was wrong!

ubercow13 7y ago

Have you seen some of the other comments in this thread? Seems like there's a good chance it would be more like: Interviewer: here, a laptop with vi Applicant: I've never used vi Interviewer: ....

unknownkadath 7y ago
Applicant: I prefer emacs Interviewer: REPENT, SINNER!
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago
  Eliminate My Application, Continue Searching
westmeal 7y ago
vi vi vi is the number of the DEviL!

inferiorhuman 7y ago

just hit "i" to be dropped into insert mode, then just navigate with the arrows and use backspace like in any other editor. Yeah maybe. The default vi config that comes with FreeBSD will get out of insert mode if you use the arrow keys to go beyond the end of the line (and maybe some other situations I've forgotten). Editors are extremely personal, there's a pretty good reason that vi vs emacs is one of the eternal flame wars. I would absolutely expect a bit of discomfort and less proficiency with a different computer and a different keyboard. And, quite frankly, I'd be pretty put off by an interviewer who expected I'd hit the ground running with neither apprehension nor mistakes on someone else's computer.

sureaboutthis 7y ago
> The default vi config that comes with FreeBSD will get out of insert mode if you use the arrow keys to go beyond the end of the line No it doesn't.
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  No it doesn't. I checked before I made the post on a FreeBSD 12 machine. The stock vi on OSX (vim 8) behaves more "normally".
  - sureaboutthis 7y ago
    I'm on FreeBSD 12 now. No it doesn't. And vim is not vi but vim doesn't do that either.
    - inferiorhuman 7y ago
      Dunno what to tell you. At a prompt, running vi and entering the following keys: i a b c [right arrow] d e f results in vi displaying the text: ab Note that the key f generates a bell as vi is no longer in insert/append mode. If you're seeing different behavior I can only assume you've got wildly different terminal settings, you've configured vi and forgot about it, or have aliased vi to vim or some vi variant from ports. Either way that lends credence to the idea that judging someone for being uncomfortable at a vi prompt is a bad way to interview candidates.
      - skrebbel 7y ago
        I have absolutely no vi knowledge. I just opened an ssh to a vanilla Ubuntu install (digital ocean droplet), tried what you wrote, and I got: abcdef I've been accidentally dropped into vi on countless systems and never have my ability to type "i" and "ESC :wq" (the full extent of my vi skills) failed me. I'm super confused by your comment.

hluska 7y ago

Walking into an interview, being given vi and told to write code would be a horrible experience. Expecting someone to grasp a dramatically different editor with interview jitters is unfair. Frankly, that’s the kind of behaviour that would be a massive red flag for me - it would absolutely lead me to reject any position I was offered.

folkhack 7y ago
Agree. I'm perfectly capable at vi and I'd probably just walk because it shows total arrogance on the interviewer's part. Anecdotal - I use zsh, with the bureau theme - pretty obvious it's not just a bash shell. During a more operations-focused interview I had someone ask me if he could use bash because he wasn't very familiar with zsh and would like to work with a known tool. Super competent guy. I thought it was a perfectly reasonable request.
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  Additionally vi is so configurable that one may be intimately familiar with their own vi configuration but really awkward with the stock (or interviewer's) configuration.
  - folkhack 7y ago
    > Additionally vi is so configurable that one may be intimately familiar with their own vi configuration Didn't even think of that - you could totally say the same about my Sublime editor =D People are comfortable with their own tools and I don't like putting candidates into a corner with what they're using.

trickstra 7y ago

If the task was "write me a basic function that adds two numbers" then sure, editor doesn't matter, anyone with basic understanding of the language must absolutely be able to do that without google. But that's not the task they use for interviews. It's gonna be something like one special scenario of an abstract academic problem that you will never encounter in a high traffic website project. You either shouldn't need to code it and the thought process should be enough for the purpose of the interview, or you need to think and focus really hard, and being constantly distracted by an editor that doesn't do what you expected, because you have a muscle memory for your own keyboard shortcuts totally ruins that. The result is that your performance in this task has nothing in common with your performance in the job.

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago

"I've never driven a semi before." "NEXT! Obviously you just can't drive, your claim that you were a professional Formula 1 driver is a complete fabrication, and worse, you're clearly bone idle and don't want to learn anything new."

scarface74 7y ago

I’ve programmed professionally for over 20 years gotten paid to program in more than a half a dozen languages and before that I learned how to program on an Apple //e by typing: CALL -151 ! To get to the built in mini assembler. But if you insist on me using Vi, an editor I’ve never used and I get dinged for that, it tells me a lot about your company and I will move on to the other 6 or 7 interviews I have lined up. Your company is not that special.

ericol 7y ago

> just hit "i" to be dropped into insert mode, then just navigate with the arrows and use backspace like in any other editor. Yeah, no. Let me call bullshit on you calling bullshit. I've been working as a mediocre programmer at the same company for the last 10 years. when I landed this job, I had never ever even heard of vi. I was "gently" introduced to it by my boss, and eventually got to kind of get used to a basic usage of it. But in the box where our server run it is configured to highlight syntax, maintain tabs and shit, delete deletes, you can move using arrow keys, and a slew of other non default niceties. Over the years I more or less got acquainted with different tastes of Linux, and used and installed it in a few of my own boxes (Debian, mostly). Even thought vi respects arrow keys by default now it seems (thanks god I don't have to use hjkl. It is hjkl, right?) there's this conf issue that I've never been able to fix _because I don't know how to formulated the question in order to google it_ and it's the fact that when you're in non edit mode, _the cursor never goes to the end of the line_, so if I have to let's say add a new line, and the last word is `return;` I have to convert that to `return;;` put the line jump between the 2 ;; and then remove the extra ;. Plus, arrow keys in non edit mode add lines with crap in it. I can't even fathom how stressfull would be doing a job interview under this circumstances. Force a person to use a different OS than they are used to? Well, may be. Even thought I don't like nano, it would be a better choice than vi because at least it beheaves as a "normal" editor. force a person to use vi with default settings? thank you very much for your time.

toyg 7y ago
I had your same problem for years (I use vi extremely sparingly) and the answer is “a” - which means “append”: it will go to the end of the line and leave you in insert mode after the last character. Found out when I was looking for something else, and improved my quality of life quite a bit. (I still hate distributions where arrow keys in insert mode don’t work like any reasonable human would expect, but they are thankfully getting thinner on the ground).
- PascLeRasc 7y ago
  Thanks, I always thought hitting $+i+right arrow was wrong!