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I had given myself a project of writing my interview phone screen coding question in as many languages as I could, more as a lark, but also in 'prep' for a cand

by jboy55 5y ago

I had given myself a project of writing my interview phone screen coding question in as many languages as I could, more as a lark, but also in 'prep' for a candidate being 'funny' when I say 'use whatever language you are comfortable in'. I did APL, which was fun, and easy. However in researching the language I came across some IBM accounting source code written in APL. It really clued me into how the language got such a following in HR/Finance applications. You got an array of everyones hours per day. Weekly total hours, pay, tax, medicare, etc, were all broken out in little calculative statements based on the array of hours. So rather than long strings of APL characters, there was just massive amounts of english and these little digraphs or trigraphs of APL for the calculative values.

valbaca 5y ago
> I had given myself a project of writing my interview phone screen coding question in as many languages as I could, more as a lark, but also in 'prep' for a candidate being 'funny' when I say 'use whatever language you are comfortable in'. I would honestly love a candidate to use some esoteric/legacy/wacky/niche language to spice it up. If they can walk me through it that would be a Strong Hire in my book (assuming it actually works when I test it later).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
fasquoika 5y ago
>It really clued me into how the language got such a following in HR/Finance applications. You got an array of everyones hours per day. Weekly total hours, pay, tax, medicare, etc, were all broken out in little calculative statements based on the array of hours. Yeah I guess APL is kind of 'spreadsheets as a Real Programming Language', isn't it?
NhanH 5y ago
Do you still have a link to said source code?
- jboy55 5y ago
  I wish I did, I've searched for it a few times, but that was perhaps 10 years or more ago.
klelatti 5y ago
I can remember still attending an IBM planning meeting in 1984 when APL was being touted as 'the future'. Cue lots of eye rolling from the sales teams who were not entirely convinced. Many years later I came across it again in a financial modelling application where it worked well. Only problem was that there were (I think) only three people in the company who understood it. So it didn't last long as the risks / costs were just too great. Which I guess would be a typical scenario for many APL applications.

by jboy55 5y ago

valbaca 5y ago

> I had given myself a project of writing my interview phone screen coding question in as many languages as I could, more as a lark, but also in 'prep' for a candidate being 'funny' when I say 'use whatever language you are comfortable in'. I would honestly love a candidate to use some esoteric/legacy/wacky/niche language to spice it up. If they can walk me through it that would be a Strong Hire in my book (assuming it actually works when I test it later).

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

fasquoika 5y ago

>It really clued me into how the language got such a following in HR/Finance applications. You got an array of everyones hours per day. Weekly total hours, pay, tax, medicare, etc, were all broken out in little calculative statements based on the array of hours. Yeah I guess APL is kind of 'spreadsheets as a Real Programming Language', isn't it?

NhanH 5y ago

Do you still have a link to said source code?

jboy55 5y ago
I wish I did, I've searched for it a few times, but that was perhaps 10 years or more ago.

klelatti 5y ago

I can remember still attending an IBM planning meeting in 1984 when APL was being touted as 'the future'. Cue lots of eye rolling from the sales teams who were not entirely convinced. Many years later I came across it again in a financial modelling application where it worked well. Only problem was that there were (I think) only three people in the company who understood it. So it didn't last long as the risks / costs were just too great. Which I guess would be a typical scenario for many APL applications.