5 ms·

The Feynman principle applies - it is important to know the thing and not as important to know it's name. In an interview, find out if the person knows them thi

by sriku 5y ago

The Feynman principle applies - it is important to know the thing and not as important to know it's name. In an interview, find out if the person knows them thing or can work it out.

TheFreim 5y ago
> it is important to know the thing and not as important to know it's name Yes and no. For years I did little computer programming projects on my own. Built some neat things, for my purposes at least. But because I didn't have the words to describe things I wasn't able to build a concrete image in my head. When I finally took a CS course and had the words to describe concepts I'd used for so long it was like a switch had been flipped, allowing me to think about problems in a much better way. I knew what many things were but because I didn't have the concepts mapped to concrete terms they remained fuzzy.
globular-toast 5y ago
Exactly. If someone does know what ACID compliance is that's great. We share a common language and that makes things easier. But if they don't, no big deal, but they should still know the concepts. There are people out there who don't know the difference between mongo and postgres. That's lacking the fundamentals.
scythmic_waves 5y ago
Though he does admit [1] > So I had learned already that names don't constitute knowledge... That's caused me a certain trouble since because I refuse to learn the name of anything... What [my father] forgot to tell me was that the knowing the names of things is useful if you wanna talk to somebody else. I think an interview might count :) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga_7j72CVlc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga_7j72CVlc
- sriku 5y ago
  Yes indeed. The names are relevant for communication (i.e. to become a part of a "discourse community" [1]), but are not indicative of one's competence at a topic. They kind of go hand in hand often due to arranged education, but that's not essential. Names also come handy when you need to search for something and search engines are not powerful at taking your description of what you're searching for. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_community
- sriku 5y ago
  It's been sort of 18 years since I started using another heuristic - if you can google for something, don't bother requiring a candidate to know it. Not an exact principle, but somewhat like that .. in that I'm more curious about how a person thinks in an interview than what he/she knows. This change in me was triggered when a candidate came in for a dev interview and we were doing the usual whiteboard problem thing back then. Someone on the panel asked "what would you do if you faced this problem on the job" and he said "I'd google for the solution". I recall not being able to make up my mind about whether to hire him right there or send him away :) .. but that was something I hadn't realized back then so the issue was not with him but with me. The lesson stayed. So .. on the topic, if the candidate didn't know ACID .. an opportunity to google followed by a detailed discussion on it would work for me.
  - Corrado 5y ago
    It actually might be more informative. If a candidate, that had never heard the term "ACID", was able to Google it and talk intelligently about it I would be most impressed and it would probably earn them a next step. In fact, that might be a good practice to try out. Find a related term that the candidate wasn't familiar with and have them research it. Give them X minutes to reason about the term and then have a discussion about it. This is a thing we all do, every day. You can't possibly know everything so you must know how to find out about new things and how to think about them.

by sriku 5y ago

The Feynman principle applies - it is important to know the thing and not as important to know it's name. In an interview, find out if the person knows them thing or can work it out.

TheFreim 5y ago

> it is important to know the thing and not as important to know it's name Yes and no. For years I did little computer programming projects on my own. Built some neat things, for my purposes at least. But because I didn't have the words to describe things I wasn't able to build a concrete image in my head. When I finally took a CS course and had the words to describe concepts I'd used for so long it was like a switch had been flipped, allowing me to think about problems in a much better way. I knew what many things were but because I didn't have the concepts mapped to concrete terms they remained fuzzy.

globular-toast 5y ago

Exactly. If someone does know what ACID compliance is that's great. We share a common language and that makes things easier. But if they don't, no big deal, but they should still know the concepts. There are people out there who don't know the difference between mongo and postgres. That's lacking the fundamentals.

scythmic_waves 5y ago

Though he does admit [1] > So I had learned already that names don't constitute knowledge... That's caused me a certain trouble since because I refuse to learn the name of anything... What [my father] forgot to tell me was that the knowing the names of things is useful if you wanna talk to somebody else. I think an interview might count :) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga_7j72CVlc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga_7j72CVlc

sriku 5y ago
Yes indeed. The names are relevant for communication (i.e. to become a part of a "discourse community" [1]), but are not indicative of one's competence at a topic. They kind of go hand in hand often due to arranged education, but that's not essential. Names also come handy when you need to search for something and search engines are not powerful at taking your description of what you're searching for. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_community
sriku 5y ago
It's been sort of 18 years since I started using another heuristic - if you can google for something, don't bother requiring a candidate to know it. Not an exact principle, but somewhat like that .. in that I'm more curious about how a person thinks in an interview than what he/she knows. This change in me was triggered when a candidate came in for a dev interview and we were doing the usual whiteboard problem thing back then. Someone on the panel asked "what would you do if you faced this problem on the job" and he said "I'd google for the solution". I recall not being able to make up my mind about whether to hire him right there or send him away :) .. but that was something I hadn't realized back then so the issue was not with him but with me. The lesson stayed. So .. on the topic, if the candidate didn't know ACID .. an opportunity to google followed by a detailed discussion on it would work for me.
- Corrado 5y ago
  It actually might be more informative. If a candidate, that had never heard the term "ACID", was able to Google it and talk intelligently about it I would be most impressed and it would probably earn them a next step. In fact, that might be a good practice to try out. Find a related term that the candidate wasn't familiar with and have them research it. Give them X minutes to reason about the term and then have a discussion about it. This is a thing we all do, every day. You can't possibly know everything so you must know how to find out about new things and how to think about them.