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Thanks for giving some credit to plain old CSS. I've used SASS & am starting to use LESS but I'm really appalled when job interviewers give me a strange look wh

by fat0wl 13y ago

Thanks for giving some credit to plain old CSS. I've used SASS & am starting to use LESS but I'm really appalled when job interviewers give me a strange look when I say I don't use them religiously. Same with COffeeScript... let's get real, pre-processing is great and all but there are tons of scenarios where it's not worth it just to get around writing extra sets of brackets or duplicating a bit of CSS. Surely there are logic-intensive places where it is a huge boon but then I'm surprised I don't see more people advocating the absolute need for something like Dart rather than pre-processors. Anyway, I feel like when you go to corporate work they want you to know atomic level ("how do various browsers interpret this bit of css") whereas its the smaller companies who want to know how many lines of code you saved by using syntactic sugar ("do you use LESS or SASS?"). They're way impressed if you use it even if it's just saving you 10 lines of code per project... Just an observation about pre-processing / interviewing / code hipsterdom. :D

Kiro 13y ago
You're lucky. In the interviews I go to they haven't even heard of SASS or LESS.
- fat0wl 13y ago
  Heh it's because I was in the RoR world... now that I'm in IBM Java-land I'm sure I won't be hearing it for a while. Eh, trust me I do miss it because I love open source and I think it's more fun to choose your own libraries/frameworks, but man do the interviews get annoying... I found tons of average pay junior level jobs in RoR that really gave me a hard time in interviews for not knowing yet another Backbone-esque js library & they act like it requires such high intellect that letting me learn on the job would be a gamble or something. When I switched to the Java world I got picked up at higher pay with a no-hassle interview just based on my GPA & prior achievements (I have a master's degree in audio signal processing -- & yes, RoR'ers still often could not take it on faith that I would be able to comprehend their js preferences). Bottom line is there are powerful tools in both camps (corporate tools v. open source) but I found that open source interviewers reaaaaally needle you even though they have less $$ to offer. And in the end they won't invest in talent, they all seem to just be looking for a senior dev who is down on his luck. Can't say I wouldn't work at an open source shop if it wasn't the right fit, just saying it can be a bit more hostile than advertised. Those folks are very picky and often looking for a golden goose at entry level salary. Anyway, just my limited experiences. I believe coding and work should be fun, but I'm pretty sure we need to set our sights on a real white whale instead of all these BS semantics.
lowboy 13y ago
CoffeeScript is much much more than just avoiding extra brackets. Anyone avoiding it because of the hype should do themselves a favour and check it out before dismissing it. I can't quantify the amount of time I've saved both reading and writing CS instead of JS, but it's gotta be in the 10-20% range. And please, can we drop the "hipster" meme around new languages/tools? People experiment and adopt promising new technologies because they see a benefit to using them.
- deleted 13y ago
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by fat0wl 13y ago

Kiro 13y ago

You're lucky. In the interviews I go to they haven't even heard of SASS or LESS.

fat0wl 13y ago
Heh it's because I was in the RoR world... now that I'm in IBM Java-land I'm sure I won't be hearing it for a while. Eh, trust me I do miss it because I love open source and I think it's more fun to choose your own libraries/frameworks, but man do the interviews get annoying... I found tons of average pay junior level jobs in RoR that really gave me a hard time in interviews for not knowing yet another Backbone-esque js library & they act like it requires such high intellect that letting me learn on the job would be a gamble or something. When I switched to the Java world I got picked up at higher pay with a no-hassle interview just based on my GPA & prior achievements (I have a master's degree in audio signal processing -- & yes, RoR'ers still often could not take it on faith that I would be able to comprehend their js preferences). Bottom line is there are powerful tools in both camps (corporate tools v. open source) but I found that open source interviewers reaaaaally needle you even though they have less $$ to offer. And in the end they won't invest in talent, they all seem to just be looking for a senior dev who is down on his luck. Can't say I wouldn't work at an open source shop if it wasn't the right fit, just saying it can be a bit more hostile than advertised. Those folks are very picky and often looking for a golden goose at entry level salary. Anyway, just my limited experiences. I believe coding and work should be fun, but I'm pretty sure we need to set our sights on a real white whale instead of all these BS semantics.

lowboy 13y ago

CoffeeScript is much much more than just avoiding extra brackets. Anyone avoiding it because of the hype should do themselves a favour and check it out before dismissing it. I can't quantify the amount of time I've saved both reading and writing CS instead of JS, but it's gotta be in the 10-20% range. And please, can we drop the "hipster" meme around new languages/tools? People experiment and adopt promising new technologies because they see a benefit to using them.

deleted 13y ago
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