4 ms·

> never be afraid to ask a question, even if it sounded ignorant On the mentoring side, never make fun of someone asking a legitimate question. I give my team

> never be afraid to ask a question, even if it sounded ignorant On the mentoring side, never make fun of someone asking a legitimate question. I give my team shit if they should know better about something but legitimate questions are taken as seriously as possible.

jstummbillig 6y ago
In fact, let's just not make fun of co-workers (in contrast to friends you work with) as a rule of thumb. We are too quick to legitimize all kind of questionable practices as soon as we start making that the prerequisite.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
> should know better about something It's been my experience that this is quite subjective. For example, the standard leetcode binary tree tests. When I mention that I'm not particularly good at them, I will usually get some variant of "Well, this is basic stuff that any programmer should know." –often delivered quite condescendingly. But I've been writing ship code for over thirty years. I have a public portfolio with hundreds of thousands of lines of ultra-high-quality code, dozens of articles on software development practices, and multiple shipping apps for years (I write code every day –my GitHub ID Activity Log is solid green). It's just that I started as an EE, and have been primarily self-taught. Since I have never encountered a binary tree in my professional experience, learning them has not been a priority. I'm certainly not interested in spending time learning impractical (to me) stuff, at the expense of learning what I consider the important stuff. I'm also constantly trying out stuff I don't already know. It makes life interesting. I write about that here: https://medium.com/chrismarshallny/thats-not-what-ships-are-built-for-595f4ae2c284 https://medium.com/chrismarshallny/thats-not-what-ships-are-...
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  Yeah, binary tree type interview questions are probably a good way to weed out broken employers.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  I don’t care if someone can bang out working binary tree on a whiteboard with the fluidity of Bob Ross, but I do care that people know that data structure and associated algorithms exist and could implement them given a dev environment, google, stack overflow, and a day or so.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
    > data structure and associated algorithms That's the thing. 99% of programming is Big Data (and windows, thereof), so everyone is on about that. I tend to write stuff that is on a much more humble scale, like device control software, or systems that are used by thousands (not millions) of people. I guess that I could say that "Any programmer should know about ring buffers," as that was a staple of my device driver stuff (I came up through hardware). In point of fact, only low-level drivers need concern themselves with ring buffers. Even programmers dedicated to writing device control software don't have to mess with them. The same with hardware handshakes, IRQs, etc. We tend to view everything through the lens of what we know.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      I agree that programmers should know about (the existence of the concept of) ring buffers, hardware handshakes, interrupts, synchronous vs asynchronous and serial vs parallel data communications, error detection/correction systems, grey codes, Karnaugh maps and logic glitching, split clock domains, etc. If you tell me “I don’t want to know about anything that I don’t need clearly and presently to accomplish my next task”, you’ve told me something important.
      - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
        > If you tell me “I don’t want to know about anything that I don’t need clearly and presently to accomplish my next task”, you’ve told me something important. Oh, wow. I'm busted. I guess I should just sell my computer and take up turd farming. Except... > "I'm also constantly trying out stuff I don't already know." That might indicate that "clearly and presently to accomplish my next task" keeps changing.
crispyambulance 6y ago
> I give my team shit if they should know better about something but legitimate questions are taken as seriously as possible. The thing is everyone has gaps in their knowledge and is missing stuff "they should know" or perhaps have forgotten about. Getting "shit" for asking a question will lead to team members clamming up and pretending they're on top of something when instead they need a hand and some review.

jstummbillig 6y ago

In fact, let's just not make fun of co-workers (in contrast to friends you work with) as a rule of thumb. We are too quick to legitimize all kind of questionable practices as soon as we start making that the prerequisite.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

> should know better about something It's been my experience that this is quite subjective. For example, the standard leetcode binary tree tests. When I mention that I'm not particularly good at them, I will usually get some variant of "Well, this is basic stuff that any programmer should know." –often delivered quite condescendingly. But I've been writing ship code for over thirty years. I have a public portfolio with hundreds of thousands of lines of ultra-high-quality code, dozens of articles on software development practices, and multiple shipping apps for years (I write code every day –my GitHub ID Activity Log is solid green). It's just that I started as an EE, and have been primarily self-taught. Since I have never encountered a binary tree in my professional experience, learning them has not been a priority. I'm certainly not interested in spending time learning impractical (to me) stuff, at the expense of learning what I consider the important stuff. I'm also constantly trying out stuff I don't already know. It makes life interesting. I write about that here: https://medium.com/chrismarshallny/thats-not-what-ships-are-built-for-595f4ae2c284 https://medium.com/chrismarshallny/thats-not-what-ships-are-...

BurningFrog 6y ago
Yeah, binary tree type interview questions are probably a good way to weed out broken employers.
sokoloff 6y ago
I don’t care if someone can bang out working binary tree on a whiteboard with the fluidity of Bob Ross, but I do care that people know that data structure and associated algorithms exist and could implement them given a dev environment, google, stack overflow, and a day or so.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  > data structure and associated algorithms That's the thing. 99% of programming is Big Data (and windows, thereof), so everyone is on about that. I tend to write stuff that is on a much more humble scale, like device control software, or systems that are used by thousands (not millions) of people. I guess that I could say that "Any programmer should know about ring buffers," as that was a staple of my device driver stuff (I came up through hardware). In point of fact, only low-level drivers need concern themselves with ring buffers. Even programmers dedicated to writing device control software don't have to mess with them. The same with hardware handshakes, IRQs, etc. We tend to view everything through the lens of what we know.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    I agree that programmers should know about (the existence of the concept of) ring buffers, hardware handshakes, interrupts, synchronous vs asynchronous and serial vs parallel data communications, error detection/correction systems, grey codes, Karnaugh maps and logic glitching, split clock domains, etc. If you tell me “I don’t want to know about anything that I don’t need clearly and presently to accomplish my next task”, you’ve told me something important.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
      > If you tell me “I don’t want to know about anything that I don’t need clearly and presently to accomplish my next task”, you’ve told me something important. Oh, wow. I'm busted. I guess I should just sell my computer and take up turd farming. Except... > "I'm also constantly trying out stuff I don't already know." That might indicate that "clearly and presently to accomplish my next task" keeps changing.

crispyambulance 6y ago

> I give my team shit if they should know better about something but legitimate questions are taken as seriously as possible. The thing is everyone has gaps in their knowledge and is missing stuff "they should know" or perhaps have forgotten about. Getting "shit" for asking a question will lead to team members clamming up and pretending they're on top of something when instead they need a hand and some review.