5 ms·

This is why we can't have nice things. Or in other words, why we must usually do a coding test per company we apply for, and not just 'point them at the Github'

This is why we can't have nice things. Or in other words, why we must usually do a coding test per company we apply for, and not just 'point them at the Github'.

mikewarot 5y ago
Or stuff that's so old, it predates Git, let along Github Here's some code I wrote back in 1987/88, for example. http://www.retroarchive.org/swag/MISC/0153.PAS.html http://www.retroarchive.org/swag/MISC/0153.PAS.html
- boulos 5y ago
  There's a spelling mistake / typo: it should be ensure not insure. > This procedure allows the programmer to insure
  - shemnon42 5y ago
    Spelling mistake from 35 years ago. Strong no hire! Wait... perhaps that's why the github account route may have issues...
    - boulos 5y ago
      The comments were so good, I kinda had to point it out!
nradov 5y ago
- ryeights 5y ago
  ...source?
  - fxtentacle 5y ago
    Old people who manage legacy systems, like that one guy duct-taping a bank's online operations.
    - _dain_ 5y ago
      Are they really the "best" developers? It just sounds like a different skillset and mindset, not necessarily better or worse.
      - ygjb 5y ago
        I am willing to wager in a broad sense, that the best COBOL, Fortran, and RPG, that "Old people who manage legacy systems" is probably a fair estimate, and there is probably narrow overlap between developers for those languages and git experience. There are lots of younger folks who fall into supporting these platforms through experience, but I would also wager that the number of fresh, doe eyed engineers graduating from uni/college thinking "I am going to be the best COBOL programmer!" can probably be counted on one hand :P
        Spooky23 5y ago
        I encountered such a person. Her parents were both mainframe nerds and she was a true believer. I think the shock of working as a 23 year old in a group of geezers that had been fighting each other since 1975 was traumatic. We stole her and she was a pretty awesome DBA last I knew.
        sharken 5y ago
        Nearly all DBAs i have worked with have been great. Not sure why that is, but it's been very consistent.
  - jaaron 5y ago
    Game industry would be one source. At least for many teams and projects, Git isn't very useful (horrible for large binary files common in AAA games). So many companies still use Perforce or sometimes you'll see SVN still. That means a whole bunch of really qualified engineers who have never or rarely used git. I'm sure there are other industries for which that is true too. It's a good reminder how small a section of the tech industry comments on Hacker News.
- greggman3 5y ago
  This is ridiculous. It might be true that there are many great developers that have nothing on github but it is certinaly not true that "actual best developers have little or nothing to point to on github". There are plenty of "actual best developers" who have prolific amounts of stuff on github, directly or indirectly.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- eternityforest 5y ago
  I can believe they don't have an extensive GitHub... but if they can't use Git they must have either only had a few jobs that all used something else(That's fine, just uncommon), or be in a specialist industry that doesn't use Git(Also not common), or they don't know VCS at all.
  - Mashimo 5y ago
    Or use an IDE that has all that build in.
  - com2kid 5y ago
    Plenty of companies use source control other than git. AAA gaming studios are famous for not using git due to git's poor handling of large binary assets w/o workarounds. I've used other source control systems and they do have benefits over Git to be sure. Access control is a huge one, you can have a large repository and have fine grained access control over who can access what paths in the repository. Heck with some source control systems this access control may even integrate with Active Directory, so there is only 1 account to maintain! The way to do that with git is to have a lot of tiny repos, with all the advantages and disadvantages that brings. Don't get me wrong, git's ability to easily branch is huge. I am totally over working in source control systems that required an admin to approve creating a branch, or where merging branches was a huge deal that could take a very long time to do, but git isn't the end all be all of source control systems, and there are certainly features from other systems that I miss when using git.
    - throwaway2037 5y ago
      Regarding large binary assets, I literally Googled "git large binary assets" and had many hits with various solutions. GitHub started offering Git LFS (Large File Storage) in 2015 -- more than 6 years ago. That said, many places still use Perforce.
      - brimble 5y ago
        It's newish (yes, 6 years is newish for projects that don't have a lot more hours, direction, and dedicated drive behind them than git-lfs seems to) and janky or unintuitive in some cases and adds another obtuse nerdy thing for e.g. artists to figure out (or be supported through) and requires extra software and server config to self-host (most of which is, uh, not as complete as one might hope) and makes backups less dead-simple than plain git and has nothing like an official server-side implementation (last I checked GH's "don't use this for production" implementation was the closest thing) and can make any kind of automation or extra tooling used with git a real pain since much of it's not lfs-aware, including some built-in git commands in certain situations (git-archive against a bare repo, for instance, which can be a super handy command in many situations). Overall, I like it and have promoted its use and stand by that, but not every place has the time or inclination to screw around with it when they can just pay for something that solves the problem (likely Perforce). While we're at it, git in general would be one fuck of a lot easier to support for cross-platform users and in tooling for complex projects if libgit2 caught up and took over as the official implementation. The pile-of-binaries-and-shell-and-god-knows-what-else (all living on top of a hacky, huge bundle of junk, on Windows) official Git itself is a huge impediment to doing anything with git other than just executing "git [command]" in Unixy environments. It'd also make "build my own GitHub" type projects far more tractable, cutting out some of GitHub's (and GitLab, et c.) server-side moat. LFS is a pain, right now, even 6 years in, if you don't tie yourself to a major commercial Git host or put in a lot more effort than traditional self-hosting git requires. To reiterate: I still like and advocate it, circumstances allowing, but it definitely is not a mature solution.
- khazhoux 5y ago
  These "best developers" should really start learning to use Git (and these other newfangled technologies) or else in 10 years they'll be blaming age discrimination when they can't land their next job.
- democracy 5y ago
  >> The actual best developers mostly have little or nothing to point to on GitHub. You might find this shocking but many of them don't even know how to use Git at all. It all goes in circles. As soon as Github (GIT in general) becomes adopted by the majority of enterprise (already happened probably) we are gonna see something else which is "cool". Something else, smaller, simpler, cooler gonna attract the next wave of programmers. I am sure there is a great space for innovation.

This is why we can't have nice things. Or in other words, why we must usually do a coding test per company we apply for, and not just 'point them at the Github'.

mikewarot 5y ago

Or stuff that's so old, it predates Git, let along Github Here's some code I wrote back in 1987/88, for example. http://www.retroarchive.org/swag/MISC/0153.PAS.html http://www.retroarchive.org/swag/MISC/0153.PAS.html

boulos 5y ago
There's a spelling mistake / typo: it should be ensure not insure. > This procedure allows the programmer to insure
- shemnon42 5y ago
  Spelling mistake from 35 years ago. Strong no hire! Wait... perhaps that's why the github account route may have issues...
  - boulos 5y ago
    The comments were so good, I kinda had to point it out!

nradov 5y ago

ryeights 5y ago
...source?
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  Old people who manage legacy systems, like that one guy duct-taping a bank's online operations.
  - _dain_ 5y ago
    Are they really the "best" developers? It just sounds like a different skillset and mindset, not necessarily better or worse.
    - ygjb 5y ago
      I am willing to wager in a broad sense, that the best COBOL, Fortran, and RPG, that "Old people who manage legacy systems" is probably a fair estimate, and there is probably narrow overlap between developers for those languages and git experience. There are lots of younger folks who fall into supporting these platforms through experience, but I would also wager that the number of fresh, doe eyed engineers graduating from uni/college thinking "I am going to be the best COBOL programmer!" can probably be counted on one hand :P
      - Spooky23 5y ago
        I encountered such a person. Her parents were both mainframe nerds and she was a true believer. I think the shock of working as a 23 year old in a group of geezers that had been fighting each other since 1975 was traumatic. We stole her and she was a pretty awesome DBA last I knew.
        sharken 5y ago
        Nearly all DBAs i have worked with have been great. Not sure why that is, but it's been very consistent.
- jaaron 5y ago
  Game industry would be one source. At least for many teams and projects, Git isn't very useful (horrible for large binary files common in AAA games). So many companies still use Perforce or sometimes you'll see SVN still. That means a whole bunch of really qualified engineers who have never or rarely used git. I'm sure there are other industries for which that is true too. It's a good reminder how small a section of the tech industry comments on Hacker News.
greggman3 5y ago
This is ridiculous. It might be true that there are many great developers that have nothing on github but it is certinaly not true that "actual best developers have little or nothing to point to on github". There are plenty of "actual best developers" who have prolific amounts of stuff on github, directly or indirectly.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
eternityforest 5y ago
I can believe they don't have an extensive GitHub... but if they can't use Git they must have either only had a few jobs that all used something else(That's fine, just uncommon), or be in a specialist industry that doesn't use Git(Also not common), or they don't know VCS at all.
- Mashimo 5y ago
  Or use an IDE that has all that build in.
- com2kid 5y ago
  Plenty of companies use source control other than git. AAA gaming studios are famous for not using git due to git's poor handling of large binary assets w/o workarounds. I've used other source control systems and they do have benefits over Git to be sure. Access control is a huge one, you can have a large repository and have fine grained access control over who can access what paths in the repository. Heck with some source control systems this access control may even integrate with Active Directory, so there is only 1 account to maintain! The way to do that with git is to have a lot of tiny repos, with all the advantages and disadvantages that brings. Don't get me wrong, git's ability to easily branch is huge. I am totally over working in source control systems that required an admin to approve creating a branch, or where merging branches was a huge deal that could take a very long time to do, but git isn't the end all be all of source control systems, and there are certainly features from other systems that I miss when using git.
  - throwaway2037 5y ago
    Regarding large binary assets, I literally Googled "git large binary assets" and had many hits with various solutions. GitHub started offering Git LFS (Large File Storage) in 2015 -- more than 6 years ago. That said, many places still use Perforce.
    - brimble 5y ago
      It's newish (yes, 6 years is newish for projects that don't have a lot more hours, direction, and dedicated drive behind them than git-lfs seems to) and janky or unintuitive in some cases and adds another obtuse nerdy thing for e.g. artists to figure out (or be supported through) and requires extra software and server config to self-host (most of which is, uh, not as complete as one might hope) and makes backups less dead-simple than plain git and has nothing like an official server-side implementation (last I checked GH's "don't use this for production" implementation was the closest thing) and can make any kind of automation or extra tooling used with git a real pain since much of it's not lfs-aware, including some built-in git commands in certain situations (git-archive against a bare repo, for instance, which can be a super handy command in many situations). Overall, I like it and have promoted its use and stand by that, but not every place has the time or inclination to screw around with it when they can just pay for something that solves the problem (likely Perforce). While we're at it, git in general would be one fuck of a lot easier to support for cross-platform users and in tooling for complex projects if libgit2 caught up and took over as the official implementation. The pile-of-binaries-and-shell-and-god-knows-what-else (all living on top of a hacky, huge bundle of junk, on Windows) official Git itself is a huge impediment to doing anything with git other than just executing "git [command]" in Unixy environments. It'd also make "build my own GitHub" type projects far more tractable, cutting out some of GitHub's (and GitLab, et c.) server-side moat. LFS is a pain, right now, even 6 years in, if you don't tie yourself to a major commercial Git host or put in a lot more effort than traditional self-hosting git requires. To reiterate: I still like and advocate it, circumstances allowing, but it definitely is not a mature solution.
khazhoux 5y ago
These "best developers" should really start learning to use Git (and these other newfangled technologies) or else in 10 years they'll be blaming age discrimination when they can't land their next job.
democracy 5y ago
>> The actual best developers mostly have little or nothing to point to on GitHub. You might find this shocking but many of them don't even know how to use Git at all. It all goes in circles. As soon as Github (GIT in general) becomes adopted by the majority of enterprise (already happened probably) we are gonna see something else which is "cool". Something else, smaller, simpler, cooler gonna attract the next wave of programmers. I am sure there is a great space for innovation.