4 ms·

This is me. I've used so many different programming languages over the years that for the first week of any new project, I am definitely an error message progra

by MrLeap 7y ago

This is me. I've used so many different programming languages over the years that for the first week of any new project, I am definitely an error message programmer. It goes something like this on day#1 Okay, I need to iterate through a collection. Which is it again? foreach (int element in elements), no that's C#. for (int element : elements) .. nope that's java for (var element in elements) .. There we go. Probably wouldn't exactly go like this, I know js isn't typed when I sit down to write it. (except for when it is!) ;) Regardless, I call this my "tooling up" period. Each day i'm faster, and it takes about a week to get to 100%. but then I'm golden until the project is done and I inevitably have to switch techs again. I probably need to flex more than specialists in interviews because of this. Whenever pseudo code is on the menu I breath a sigh of relief.

ShakataGaNai 7y ago
I'm with you on this, even beyond the first week. Been doing primarily Python for more than a year now and sometimes I still slide back to my Perl days and write the C-style for.
- petre 7y ago
  Perl has foreach which can iterate over ranges, arrays, lists and is synonymous with for, yet works just like foreach (that's Perl just being Perl).
mjevans 7y ago
This is why the real-tests should be entirely in pseudo-code and about the logical structure. Any optimization should happen after a basic algorithm that works and might go along the lines of (telemetry suggests our platform has a bottleneck here) how would you speed things up if there's an issue in this section?
foobarian 7y ago
When I see a candidate is not sure about some syntax trivia e.g. indexing expressions in Python, names for some library functions like charAt, size, length etc. I tell them to pick one (make it up) and move on. Though lately I've been using a runnable whiteboard with autocomplete so they have been able to figure it out on their own. It makes me sad to think how hard it would be to remove bad interviewers like above. But as long as they perform reasonably well they won't get fired, and I don't think there is any interview QC system to feed back into the org. And thus we slowly slide from A to B and C territory...

by MrLeap 7y ago

ShakataGaNai 7y ago

I'm with you on this, even beyond the first week. Been doing primarily Python for more than a year now and sometimes I still slide back to my Perl days and write the C-style for.

petre 7y ago
Perl has foreach which can iterate over ranges, arrays, lists and is synonymous with for, yet works just like foreach (that's Perl just being Perl).

mjevans 7y ago

This is why the real-tests should be entirely in pseudo-code and about the logical structure. Any optimization should happen after a basic algorithm that works and might go along the lines of (telemetry suggests our platform has a bottleneck here) how would you speed things up if there's an issue in this section?

foobarian 7y ago

When I see a candidate is not sure about some syntax trivia e.g. indexing expressions in Python, names for some library functions like charAt, size, length etc. I tell them to pick one (make it up) and move on. Though lately I've been using a runnable whiteboard with autocomplete so they have been able to figure it out on their own. It makes me sad to think how hard it would be to remove bad interviewers like above. But as long as they perform reasonably well they won't get fired, and I don't think there is any interview QC system to feed back into the org. And thus we slowly slide from A to B and C territory...