Got a phone interview for a backend dev job in an opsec company.

Interviewer:
This is a very serious and prestigious position, we take care of the most important bits of code.

*Proceeds to talk introductory nonsense*

Interviewer:
Do you know what a DNS is?

Me:
Yes, of course! DNS stands for Domain Name System.... Blah blah blah... I explain about the servers, about hosts file, about DNS spoofing and everything else possible on this topic.

Interviewer:
See, I was patient with you - letting you finish. I'm not sure what you're talking about and where you got it from, but a DNS is that line in the browser where you type the site's name.

He didn't ask any more questions, just told me that they'll get back to me. I asked not to do that.

Three weeks later I got an email claiming that I'm not qualified.

Interview with a candidate. He calls himself "C++ expert" on his resume. I think: "oh, great, I love C++ too, we will have an interesting conversation!"

Me: let's start with an easy one, what is 'nullptr'?
Him: (...some undecipherable sequence of words that didn't make any sense...)

In my mind: mh, probably I didn't understand right. Let's try again with something simple and more generic

Me: can you tell me about memory management in C++?
Him: you create objects on the stack with the 'new' keyword and they get automatically released when no other object references them

In my mind: wtf is this guy talking about? Is he confusing C++ with Java? Does he really know C++? Let's make him write some code, just to be sure

Me: can you write a program that prints numbers from 1 to 10?

Ten minutes and twenty mistakes later...

Me: okay, so what is this <int> here in angle brackets? What is a template?
Him: no idea

Me: you wrote 'cout', why sometimes do I see 'std::cout' instead? What is 'std'?
Answer: no idea, never heard of 'std'

I think: on his resume he also said he is a Java expert. Let's see if he knows the difference between the two. He *must* have noticed that one is byte-compiled and the other one is compiled to native code! Otherwise, how does he run his code? He must answer this question correctly:

Me: what is the difference between Java and C++? One has a Virtual Machine, what about the other?
Him: Java has the Java Virtual Machine
Me: yes, and C++?
Him: I guess C++ has a virtual machine too. The C++ Virtual Machine

Me (exhausted): okay, I don't have any other questions, we will let you know

And this is the story of how I got scared of interviews

My boyfriend.

He's an amazing software developer, has a few more years of experience with me, and because he's not a colleague, I feel comfortable asking him dumb questions. Combined with his patience and willingness to explain things very thoroughly, it's helped my post college learning immensely.

I love that I can cook him dinner, and then go to him with a code smell that I found at work, and spend the meal discussing ways to make cleaner code. I'm not sure who the real winner is in that situation. Probably my employer, haha.

!rant

I've always wanted to son to enjoy the the same feeling I get when I'm developing. Today my son pulled up a chair next to me and started asking questions about my code, it's safe to say I got those proud dad feels.

Feels good man, feels real good.

1. Have some issue with my code which spits out cryptic compiler error.

2. Ask on stack overflow, Reddit, etc for a solution.

3. Get scolded at for "not reading the documentation" and "asking questions which could be answered by just Googling". Still no clue what I'm doing wrong, or what the solution would be.

4. Find someone else's vaguely related problem.

5. Post my problematic code as the answer, with arrogant comment about OP being a retard for not figuring that out for themselves.

6. A dozen angry toxic nerds flock in to tell me how retarded and wrong I am, correcting me... solving my original problem.

7. Evil plan succeeded, my code compiles, and as a bonus I made the internet a worse place in the process.

I think if you tell a bunch of autistic neckbeards that "all coronaviruses are fundamentally incurable", you'd have a vaccine within a week.

Is this the code life
Another scrum meeting
Caught in the the Node life
No escape from reality
Open your eyes
Look up to the screens and see..
I'm just a dev boy
Doing some debugging
Because there's warnings here
Errors there
Segment faults
Everywhere
Anytime you distract
Takes another hour from me
From me

*piano starts

Mama. Just committed a bug
Merge the branch to production
Did it fast for milestones
Mama. The repo has just begun
But now they going to throw the stack away.
Mama. U u u uu
Didn't mean to code in LAMP
But it's the only stack i know how to setup
In Ubuntu. Without docker
I really don't get vagrant

*piano

It's too late
My team is done
Some dev is working in Nepal
A UX dev. Now what is that?
Goodbye everybody
I've got to go
Gotta leave this lame meeting
And face the truth
Oh nooooo. I i interns
(they have questions)
I want to debug
I don't want to stay till 3 in the morning

*epic guitar

I see a litlle dev over there
Let's code review, let's code review
Did he do the last commit?
Coding in the white board
Very very frightening me
That's bug(that's a bug)
That's a bug (that's a bug)
What the f*ck did you do that?
Magnificcooooooo

I was just coding and nobody liked it
He was coding and nobody liked it, spare his some time to do his debugging

Easy man. Here go. Will you let me code?
A meeting. No,we will not let you code. ( let me code)
A meeting. we will not let you code. ( let me code)
A meeting. we will not let you code. ( let me code)
We will not let you code
Never never let you go
Never let you code, oh
No no no no no no no
Oh mama mia, mama mia ( dude, you've gotta let me code)
Screw you guys, I'm gonna code and commit. Commit. Comiiiiitt!

*epic guitar

So you think you can review me and spit in my eye?
So you think you can dump me and erase my branch?
Oh baby, cant do this to me baby
I've just have to log out.
I've just have to log outta here

*epic guitar solo

Nothing really matters
The users will not care
Nothing really matters
To them

Any way this code blows

Manager: This code you wrote violates the single responsibility principle!!

Dev: How so?

Manager: You have one function that you call in *MULTIPLE* places. That’s too much responsibility for one function! Functions should only have one responsibility!! Creeping the scope of a function beyond that is a TERRIBLE way to write code!

Dev: But why spin up multiple functions that all perform the same thing?

Manager: Well if a function has a bug in it and you use that function multiple places then that bug exists everywhere you use that function. If a function only has one responsibility then if it has a bug that bug will only exist in the single place it is called! You really should think first before asking questions like that.

Dev: …

So today this Mother F**ker get HR to back him up to accuse me of not communicating well in the team because I consistently asked him (the code owner) why he kept coding not following the coding guideline.

How is it not communicating? He literally ghosted me and blocked me every time I ask him questions. Which I somewhat don't understand what he is trying to do. HR lady told me that a senior software engineer should have the knowledge to understand everything and all the code.

But the code looks like this :

Manager: Good news everyone, I made a big giant announcement this morning that the app upgrades will be released today!

Dev: They definitely won’t be, we need another 2 weeks minimum. I told you yesterday

Manager: Ok well I already made the announcement that today was the day so too bad for you.

Dev: Doesn’t change the state of things

Manager: 😡 This announcement is supposed to motivate you to work faster! You guys are making me look bad when you don’t support me like this!

Dev: Working as fast as we can, it’s a 2 person dev team for 4 separate applications so it’s quite a bit to get pushed through

Manager: Ok well then stay extra then, we have to get this out asap. Tell your spouses they are not going to be seeing much of you until this work is done. People are starting to ask questions!!!!!

Dev: Not my problem, it’s done when its done. I’m not staying extra.

Manager: !!

// *************

Might be blowing my cover a little but what are they going to do? Fire me? Good luck getting this out without me. They’ve tried to replace me in the past but the cheapest person they could find was 60k more expensive than me and still couldn’t keep up. Probably they’ll ship the work overseas and the code will die in a dumpster fire and cost them even more. Ah well, just another company that doesn’t deserve code.

So today I was with my I guess 9-10yo cousin. He was playing clash of clans.
I told him, “you can also make this type of games”.
After this he was stared at me for like 25-30sec his face expression was awesome. Then said “seriously? I thought games are developed on a certain place where all the games are made.”
I said “no anyone can create games if you know how to code and all.”

After that multiple questions was on the way and I answered all for him.

But he totally amazed with this knowledge. And I felt good to.

The first time I decided to hack around a bit:D

One of my teachers made a quiz software, which is only used by him(his lectures are about databases), and it is highly unsecure. When I heard that it is written in C# I decided to look in it's source code. The biggest problem I ran into: this program is only available on the computers in his classroom, and he monitors the computers display. However, I successfully put it into my pendrive without getting caught.

So when I got home, I just had to use a .NET decompiler(in this case: dotPeek) to get the fully functional source code. The basic function of the program was to download a quiz from his database server, and when it was finished, grade it client-side. Than, I realized how bad it was: It contains the number of questions, the number of correct and incorrect answers.
I've just made a modified .exe, which contained really little modification(like correctAnswers=maxQuestions, incorrectAnswers=0). Everything looks the same, you just have to click over it, and everytime it will return with 100%.

And the bonus: The program connects to the database as a user with root access, and without password. I was able to log in, download(dropping was available too, but didn't try) databases(with all the answers) and so on.

Never had to use it though, it was just a sort-of experience gaining.:)

Once upon a time there was a dev.
The dev had a resume that said he could dev.
We called the dev, he sounded intelligent.
We hired the dev, who was a bit green, on a three month probationary period.
The dev did very little.
When asked, we said he contributed to discussions, but seemed unclear about what to do, and maybe they could keep him as an intern if they wanted to have him at all.
They hired him. As a full time dev.
6 months later, that dev was shocked to find we could log into the servers with a privileged account.
We (his team mates) were sad.
We asked him to fix a few prod errors.
A little while later he said "Done!"
We then had to walk him through how to actually fix them, not just add a couple pieces of info to the table.
We were sad, again.
We asked him to fix some prod errors again.
We had to walk him through the process again
We expressed concerns to our superiors about his abilities because he was all theory, no hands on ability
They promoted him
We were sad
A few of us said "Fuck you guys, I'm going home"
They said OK
Now that guy is the only one that "knows" that code base
I get calls sometimes asking me questions.
I told them to pay me a consultant fee.
They said no
I said no
They called again
I laughed at them

Listen to the people who know when you ask them questions.
Listen to the people who know when they tell you there is a problem
Don't be like that company

!!fml

"Root, go fix this bug. It'll take you two days."

The "bug" is a feature that was never implemented for one particular payment type.

The code in question is two years old, full of typos, smells, junior-isms, and is convoluted AF. The feature's commit touched 190 files and implemented many other features as well. Thus far, I have been unable to narrow down where this particular feature's code lives for the other payment types, nor which code or payment paths lead to it. Burned out, I can barely focus on the screen, let alone follow its many twisting and dynamically-inferred paths. I hint as to the ticket's scavenger hunt nature during standup.

"But I wrote comments on the ticket telling you exactly where to look to fix it," Thundercunt admonishes in front of the team.

"Sure, you did," Root replies. "You reworded what the original dev had said in the comments 20 minutes prior, and agreed with him. His comments were helpful, but it doesn't tell me how any of it works," she continues.

TC scoffs and closes the meeting.

Root stares blankly, seeing neither code nor screen, questions her life decisions, and recalls the previous tickets she has worked on: nearly every one of them busywork, fixing other people's bugs. Bugs she never could have gotten away with if she tried.

"Why do I put up with this?" She asks. "They don't care, and it's killing me."

But the bills remain, and so must she.

"Fuck my life" she finally decides.

We have this guy who is responsible for software testing, user support and stuff. Not a programmer but with good technical base knowledge. He was interested in writing automated tests, and I told him he might take some time to learn and help us there. In the last months I had to answer and explain a gazillion questions about our codebase and coding in general and it took me lot of time. But last week he showed me his first test suite which was actually good code and showed a lot of understanding of all aspects of this. This was more satisfying than anything on work ever.

Can I only pick one?

I don't hate a lack of skill by itself. Incompetence, in my book, refers to a lack of skill combined with being in a position of responsibility.

The junior/intern in my team writes pretty bad code, but that is OK. He asks questions, I give pointers and bounce back his PRs ten times in a row, and he keeps fixing things without complaints.

My boss however... still writes PHP as if he's living in the 90s. He doesn't visit scrum meetings because he "isn't a developer". He thinks of a new feature while pooping, writes it without telling anyone, and throws it into production without making a PR.

!rant

I feel darn good today! I caught some A-holes cheating the system on Stack Overflow.

So basically a question was asked with no code examples present and not a single reference to any framework being used.
The tag only had 'javascript', which probably limits to only 157.244.457 existing frameworks.

I'm commenting something like 'Show us your code so we can have a look'.

After 2 minutes, out of the blue, an answer appears. AND WOW! This guy had a Magical 8 Ball™!
He could predict the framework AND had a very specific fix. Just a one-liner! Go figure!

So I'm like thinking.. What the fuck just happened? Did I miss something? «Going over the question two more times»

All of the sudden, up-votes start popping up all over the place. The question was marked 3 times, the answer was marked an up-voted multiple times, and THEN it hit me (I'm kind of slow).
I checked both user profiles and instead of the usual 'air of mystery', these guys were actually dumb enough to include their company name.

AssertEquals == true.

So in the comment section, I raise my concerns on the legitimacy of the question as clearly this was 'telephoned' as we say it in Dutch, meaning as much as 'rehearsed' in this context.
But as if that was not enough, this another guy comes in and COPY/PASTED(!) the answer of guy #1. Again. Up-votes. EVERYWhere.

So I start going over some of the questions and answers of The Three Musketeers or TTM, as I'll refer them as of now.

TTM had posted over 15 questions combined, mostly crap and incomplete no-code questions. And they had answered most of their own questions.
Sometimes another guy's answer was accepted with zero up-votes as a smoke screen while the real winner was one of their own.

I marked ALL of these questions for moderation, left for lunch, and came back to see how far my blast radius reached.
Turns out, pretty damn far! Although their accounts have not been deleted, TTM have lost most of their reputation points.

They will remain on my watchlist for a couple of months. I know that is quite childish of me, but I just call it my 'guilty pleasure'! ;D
And besides, what else is there to do, instead of browsing DevRant?

Look... I know I'm just a newbie. I started a year ago as a junior. Sure. No one wants to do code review, so I got chosen to do it. People don't like it when their code gets criticised. And you know what? I get it, I should probably be a bit nicer with my comments. I should not suggest I'll make a fork and split internal library into two streams if things continue this way. I should not ask questions that can be understood as me being passive-aggressive.

But holy fucking shit, you're a senior developer. Don't treat Java as a fucking scripting language. Don't have a method that has 600 lines of code, because you're repeating the code! You've already copy pasted this shit, and modified it slightly. Like, couldn't you have created some architecture around the code? How can a senior dev copy-paste code?

Oh and why the fuck did you create a new utility class for functionality I already provide? Look, I admit, yours is a lot better, ok? It has extra functionality. But why the fuck didn't you enhance my utility class? Why did you create a new one? Did you just not want to touch my code, or did you not see it right below your newly created class?

Am I the only one who fucking cares about maintainable code in this company? When I got hired, I was in tears by how frustrating a lot of the things were. No documentation anywhere, not even fucking comments. No processes in place. Want to do something? Source code is your documentation. Fuck you! I busted my ass of to force everyone to document every little bullshit, to re-factor their MRs that I reviewed, and I won't let even a senior fucking dev pollute the code base!

Fuuuuuck... Me...

!rant.
I've worked for about two months at my (first) job. Its amazing.
We create audio/video software for the products we make.

There are 9 programmers besides me, I'm the only junior. And I'm still learning my way around the code, but they still value my input.

We only do stand ups for 5-10 min, like it should.

One if my colleagues helps me often when I have questions, so I've nicknamed him ducky.

My pm is awesome, he's great at coding and a great manager.

When we work overtime, the department pays for delivery food and drinks.

And we've already gone on 2 trips with the department, mountain biking and a BBQ.

I love my job and I hope that I'll soon be good enough to ask less questions.

Interviewed a dev for a junior role earlier this week...my first question:

const numbers = [0.1, 0.2, 0.3];
let sum = 0;

for (i = 0; i < numbers.length; ++i) {
setTimeout(() => {
sum += numbers[i];
}, 0);
}

// Refactor the preceding code so that the following returns true.
console.log(sum === 0.6);

---
He had no idea where to even start, so I asked him to walk through the code with me line by line, he couldn't get past line 1 - literally didn't know what an array was... I walked through the code with him and he just started to look more and more lost.

I didn't even bother with the rest of my questions on OOP, FP, etc...

Am I really expecting too much of somebody that claims to have 2 years practical experience in JavaScript, jQuery, Angular, and PHP?

Do you think this is a problem a junior dev should be able to solve...even if it takes some hand-holding?

(c) Creative Tim. Worth to read pips!

How to land a programming job

1. ABC (Always Be Coding) - The more you code, the better you'll get.

2. Master at least one multi-paradigm language - Some good candidates are C#, C++, Java, PHP, Python, and Ruby.

3. Re-invent the wheel - You should implement the most common data structures in your language choice.

4. Solve word problems - Pick those that test your ability to implement recursive, pattern-matching, greedy, dynamic programming, and graph problems

5. Make coding easy - At least, make it look easy.

6. Be passionate - If you don't care, then nobody else will.

7. Don't make assumptions - Ask questions if you're not sure.

People on Stack Overflow are SUCH FUCKING ASSHOLES

"You didn't show us where you declared this unimportant array, please review this article for how to ask questions"

My question doesn't concern the array, my question concerns how the system works, all code I provided was only for clarity. Read my fucking question you arrogant asshole. You have lots of points, fine, go tell your mother, but you assume I don't know how to ask a question which you clearly did not read.

It's disheartening to see a senior member of my team shitting on the code of less mature developers. Don't just say "this is unacceptable", elaborate, teach them. How are they going to action anything from that feedback?

Take the time to respond to their questions when they ask for clarification on what you're saying. Don't berate them.

Honestly some developers need to learn a thing or two about code etiquette.

There's no room for good cop / bad cop behaviour.

Someone on a C++ learning and help discord wanted to know why the following was causing issues.

char * get_some_data() {
char buffer[1000];
init_buffer(&buffer[0]);
return &buffer[0];
}

I told them they were returning a pointer to a stack allocated memory region. They were confused, didn't know what I was talking about.

I pointed them to two pretty decently written and succinct articles, the first about stack vs. heap, and the second describing the theory of ownership and lifetimes. I instructed to give them a read, and to try to understand them as best as possible, and to ping me with any questions. Then I promised to explain their exact issue.

Silence for maybe five minutes. They disregard the articles, post other code saying "maybe it's because of this...". I quickly pointed them back at their original code (the above) and said this is 100% an issue you're facing. "Have you read the articles?"

"Nope" they said, "I just skimmed through them, can you tell me what's wrong with my code?"

Someone else chimed in and said "you need to just use malloc()." In a C++ room, no less.

I said "@OtherGuy please don't blindly instruct people to allocate memory on the heap if they do not understand what the heap is. They need to understand the concepts and the problems before learning how C++ approaches the solution."

I was quickly PM'd by one of the server's mods and told that I was being unhelpful and that I needed to reconsider my tone.

Fuck this industry. I'm getting so sick of it.

I know a guy, about 50 years old. He is a self-taught programmer since he was young, and he has always used Visual Basic (never anything newer than VB6).

He once needed to interface with a web application I wrote, so I asked him to send me a POST HTTP request. He didn't know what I was talking about. No notion of REST, sockets, HTTP, nothing.

The he showed me his code. Actually, his codes. He had multiple copies of the project, one for each version, and he even kept multiple variations of the software in different separate folders. He probably doesn't know what "version control" even means.
You think this is messy. You didn't see the actual code (it's a huge application!).

Spaghetti all over the place. Meaningful variable names, what are they? Default names for the controls, like button1, button2, etc, with forms with more than 30 buttons and text fields. This was the most incomprensibile code I have ever seen.

You might think that this guy is just a hobbyist.
No.
He sells his applications. To companies. They are obviously full of errors, but they buy them.

Now, if you're still with me, two questions come into my mind:

- why?? I hate this, because it's impossible to prove to a non-technical person that this is *not* software development.
- how do I know that, to someone else, I am not like him? How can I be sure that I know and will know what needs to be known?

At an interview, the first round was an online coding round. Two questions, one easy one hard, 90 minutes, easy peasy.

I solved the hard one first.
A bit of good logic, followed MVC pattern, all done. Worked flawlessly.
Submitted code. Online compiler threw up an internal error citing java is an invalid command(jdk not found).
Called the invigilators. What I heard next, I couldn't believe this shit.
"We're not responsible for any errors you may be having. Figure it out yourself"
I was like WTF dude. This is not even a compilation or runtime error!
After a heated discussion, I made him look at the code.
Him - what is all this classes and all? Why haven't you written everything inside the main function?
Me - those are model classes. Those are different helper functions. That is a recursive function to avoid 5 for loops and use divide and conquer. Ever heard of OOP? what kind of person writes a 300 line program inside one function?
Him - no no we write it like that only. Correct this.
Me - I fit everything inside the main function. Still the same error, java not installed. Called the idiot to have a look at it.
Him - yeah your code is wrong.
Me - may I know what's wrong with it? Can you fix it please?
Him - no no we aren't allowed to see the code (he had already read it twice. It was compiling and running perfectly, locally) .
Yeah you solved only 1 problem, you were supposed to solve 2.
Me - yes because the rest of the time I had the pleasure of your company. (It isn't everyday that I see talking buffoons.)

I applied to a backend position that requested one of the following technologies: PHP, Java or .NET ( I work on .net btw)
So far so good, the hr recruiter schedules a talk and ask a lot of standard questions like what is your greatest accomplishment, what is good code and so on.
After what seemed to be about an hour of questioning she then tells me that I am to take a technical test from backend javascript. I pause for a second and I specifically tell her, lady, the ad said .NET, Java or PHP, wtf? And she tells me, no worries, we will train you. You can imagine that I completely blew the technical interview to later get an email that my knowledge (in javascript) is not sufficient for the position. Gg guys, good company values :))

Seniors: Welcome to the team. Feel free to ask anything if you need help. There is no such thing as stupid questions.

New Dev: Sure. Thanks.

*a few minutes later*

New Dev: How to comment a code?

Seniors: Google it....and please don't ask stupid questions.

I get through tough devDays like this:

1. Brew coffee more black than a serial killer's soul in the midst of the Gotthard Base Tunnel without electricity in the midnight during a solar eclipse.

2. Flush the blackness down the throat.

3. Load the Playlist: Mostly Death/Doom Metal

4. Put on over-ear headphones (the ones your coworkers can see from a distance telling them to fuck of with their questions).

5. Code through without pauses (except for releasing piss)

6. If you're paid by the hour: $$$profit$$$

I fucking hate being the "ask me anything" guy in the office, how am I supposed to code if people interrupt me every 5 minutes?

OH LOOK AT MY HEADPHONES! MAYBE I'M CONCENTRATED AND HAVE SHIT TO DO! I mean there are other 10 devs, why don't you go to them? or maybe try to GOOGLE IT, I HEARD STACK OVERFLOW IS GOOD YOU PIECE OF SHIT!

don't get me wrong, I like to help people but I hate when those bastards come asking questions that could be easily answered if they read the code for 5 fucking minutes.

when I have to look at code that is not mine I try to understand it by myself, even if it's not documented, and I try not to bother anyone unless is really necessary.

But then this sluggish leeches think I know the whole codebase and that can interrupt me whenever they can.

I built a feature. I asked questions for days. Nobody helped. I built it anyway, and while I'm not sure it's quite right, it works.

During a code review, I asked for clarification on who the fuck it's for. Simple fucking question. Didn't get an answer. I did get the same crap response twice, though. It's great because it both doesn't answer my question and makes things worse.

Let's refer to this as "branding." Here we go!

------

Root: "Should this be changed to blue? I'm not sure who the end-user is."

TC: "should be purple, then call it something more convenient" (...what?)

Root: "Better phrasing: if we use the feature, it should match our colors and be blue. If customers use it, it should match their colors and be red. It shouldn't be both. I looked through everything again, and i'm convinced that it's only for us, so it should be blue so it matches everything."

TC: "this should be purple, and then call it something [sic] red" (...what!? also: lolcopypaste)

------

But like, that's wrong in every single way. It's internal, not external. Doing both makes it confusing. Doing both and calling it external is fucking stupid. Did she even read the PR? or any of my questions? ugh.

I swear, it's like arguing with a boulder and expecting it to listen. An ugly, oversized boulder that comically resembles Jabba the Hutt. No joke.

Whatever, it can be purple. Later, if someone complains that it's confusing, I'll just link them to the damned PR. Then again, almost everything here is confusing AF, so I doubt anyone will actually notice.

Screw this place. So glad I'm on my way out.

Interviewer: "Using this 2D array and calculate.."
Me: "This input isn't a 2D array though. Do you want me to parse or construct a 2D array then.."
"It is a 2D array."
"Uh.. ok..and if it's not what if we.."
"Look my notes say you must use this input, and treat it as a 2D Array"
"What if I wrote a function for a 2D array similar to this input, but actually a 2D array"
"You must use only the input provided"
Me: does rain dance code for 20 minutes.
Interviewer: "hmm, maybe it wasn't a 2D Array. I like your efforts but that's all the time we have today."

I promise I can code, sometimes. It does help to have correct questions to give correct answers.

Just finished an OOP course exam.

Writing code on paper? Check.

Useless, deprecated technology questions? Check.

Memorising fucking docummentation by heart? Check.

Term translations from english that make literally 0 fucking sense? Check.

I'm so fucking done with this shit. Uni isn't teaching people anything, it's fucking degrading them, so that when you get a job, you have to start learning from -9001 instead of fucking 0.

Last year I applied for a similar position to that I have now (Front-end Dev), but with a higher salary and less responsibility.

The interview went fairly well I thought, but I was also given a short written exam, where I was supposed to point out errors in the code provided. I'm certain I got everything right but I took too long (about 20 minutes for 20 questions) and they got inpatient pressing me several times.

My excuse was that I haven't used a pen in about 3 years. My hand didn't know what was happening! Who even writes anything anymore nowadays?!

!drunk (yet)

It's whiskey and code tonight!
(Whiskey because I couldn't get to my rum. annoyed face.)

Why? Because rum is so much better. duh.

More seriously: My boss has thrown me every single one his current tasks and is refusing to answer simple questions about them, such as "oh, so you already know about this bug; what's the cause?" or "how do i test this once i've fixed it?" or "where the fuck are you?"

and I'm also getting lots of bugs from other people. They're all basically categorized "urgent, please fix immediately" but should instead be categorized "super-boring and not-at-all-important, and should get fixed on the off chance you happen to remember it next year". That's the best category of bug.

I just gave up on fixing a Rails pluralize bug which fits into the aforementioned category quite nicely. It's returning "2x round of golves" -- which is hilarious and I might leave it in just for the amusement. But now it's back to fighting with ActionCable! Everything has been getting in the way of me finishing that. I'm about to start biting.

Speaking of ActionCable, it turns out my code wasn't wrong after all (have I said that yet?). Since the official documentation and examples suck, I've been digging through the (generated) javascript source and working my way backwards to learn how to use it. I cleaned up my code a little, but it was still correct. The reason nothing is working correctly is that API Guy gave me broken code. ...Again! Go figure. So I'll be rewriting that today. or tomorrow. (Whiskey, remember?)

I also have some lovely netcode to debug and fix. So totally not looking forward to that. The responses are less bloody reliable than my boss's code ffs. *grumble grumble*

During a recruitment procedure I was provided a IDE to solve some programming questions. The computer had a bunch of fuck all anti virus including avast, mcafee, it stopped every execution and scanned it for like 10sec.
McAfee fucking deleted the program for no reason giving a malicious code alert on a normal c++ program.

I called the sys Admin to inspect, guess what he did.

Fucking uninstall McAfee. Woow.

Teach people how to google properly.

May sound a bit sarcastic but I think an important part is how to look for errors on your own rather than going to the professor/TA. I’ve seen people paste in whole error logs or more often “code throws error, what do?”

At least teach in classes what to look out for like what error type in java and understanding how to look at stackoverflow questions to apply their solution to your issue.

Moral of the story: teach people how to use existing knowledge rather than just depend on someone to help their exact issue.

47 tests passed for Cracking the Code Interview questions.

Time for a drink.

Ok. Yesterday I finished building my compiler I have to say: it was a pretty darn big thing with 7000 Lines of code.

I did it alone and with almost no help.

I wanted to give some advice in case someone wants to program a compiler. I knaw its useless in times of lex and yacc, but anyway.

-have a good idea for the language
-learn about parser/lexer
-learn assembler
-do it like me: output the assembler to a file and let it assemble/link by the linux standart-tools (call the commands)
-Have fun. Fun is essential in coding

I hope I was able to help people who want to build a compiler alone... Yau can always ask questions ;~)
-

#LongRant

I AM SO FUCKING PISSED RIGHT NOW OF ALL YOU DICKHEADS WHO DON'T KNOW SHIT 'BOUT PROGRAMING AND STILL QUALIFY FOR THE NEXT ROUND!

Background: I am a final year student of Computer Science. This time of the year, companies come to the campus to recruit potential employees for their vacant positions. But during the COVID-19 times, the number of such companies and jobs have gone a little down. Two companies came to our university for recruitment — DXC Technology and Hanu Software. I cleared the aptitude/code test for DXC and appeared for the interview, which went fairly well. Waiting on the results. The rant is about the other company.

The Story: I am learning and working on Cloud (AWS specifically) for the past 1 year. I have a cloud Certification in Oracle and working my way to get Azure Certified. Hanu Software, which is a core cloud company (works on Azure) came to our campus for the recruitment (Cloud Engineer). Their test had these sections —
1. Personality (54 Questions; 15 minutes)

2. Verbal (20 Questions; 20 minutes)

3. Reasoning (15 Questions; 15 minutes)

4. Technical (25 Questions; 25 minutes)

5. Quantitative (15 Questions; 15 minutes)

As soon as I finished my Interview with DXC, I had my Hanu test within 30 minutes. I have a Mac so the test by default started on Safari. After completing 4 sections, I receive a mail in Junk from Hanu which stated that only Chrome or Firefox can be used to give the test. AHH! And on Safari.. the platform on which the test was being conducted didn't ask me for any camera permission (the test is monitored, can't even change windows/switch tabs). I then changed the browser to Mozilla Firefox and somehow finish the test. After finishing, I call up my classmates to find out how their test go. Know what? FUCKING TWATS USED GOOGLE LENS TO FIND OUT THE ANSWERS!

Last night, the list of qualifying students arrived and obviously I didn't make it to the list, but those dumbfucks did who don't even know what Cloud technology is or how it works. Neither they could do any average level program, nor have the communication skills. HOW?! HOW THEM AND NOT ME? Life is very unfair sometimes. I couldn't sleep at night.

PS: If you made this far, thank you for reading this rant (and sorry for it being so long). Makes it better to be able to share with someone. If you could, then please guide me (online resources/recommendations) to be better at competitive programming, or help me enhance my resume/linkedin or if you could refer me for an entry level position at your organisation, I would eternally be grateful. Thank you once again. And sorry for the long rant.

Questions about code has reduced greatly after I got a new laptop.

Once went for an interview for a senior web developer role. The first interview was a coding test ( not a problem, been coding for years and know I can do it). The company boasted that it supported pair programming.

I was sat at in an open plan office In front of a machine and given a question sheet of 10 code questions/puzzles and asked to solve them. Then out of nowhere 5 other senior devs appeared and stood behind me and proceeded to comment /question every single line I typed (so no pressure then).

I did questions 1-5 (fairly easy tbh) but all the devs behind me critiquing every single line started to drive me crazy so I asked if it was normal for them to interview this way and was told 'yes' and that after a year of trying to find someone they had been unsuccessful.

I told them that I wanted to leave the interview at that point; I don't mind my code being critiqued just prefer it when I've at least finished the line. Forcing you into a pair programming scenario in the interview really didn't feel right.

To this day (2years later) I still see ads for that very same job

Find super interesting forum thread from 2015 with intelligent discussion about deep technical stuff.

Creating forum account, thinking about contributing to ongoing discussion with code samples, findings, hypotheses, and some open questions.

Browse to last post, is from late 2016, from moderator:

READ FORUM RULES DO NOT POST IN OLD THREADS LOCKING THIS

Me: 😡😤😠 WHO THE FUCK CAME UP WITH THE SHITRULE THAT A DISCUSSION HAS AN EXPIRATION DATE? IF I COULD REACH THROUGH THE SCREEN RIGHT INTO 2016, I'D PUNCH YOU THROUGH THE ROOF OF YOUR MOTHER'S BASEMENT. NO ONE LOVES YOU, YOU USELESS MOTHERFUCKING CUNT OF A MODERATOR.

Favorite/most hated language? (I love a good flame war)

Why did you quit your previous job / Moment you've considered quitting your current job?

Why do you think Linux is so much better than OSX? (Ahh yes I feed on apple flavored hipster tears)

What side project are you currently working on?

If you had the best teams and unlimited funds, to be used only on a serious project using both Blockchain, IoT and AI, what would you create?

If you forgot how to code, what other career would you pursue?

What is your "I was so busy wondering if I could, that I forgot whether I should" concept/idea/project?

How many chicken eggs would fit inside the moon if it was hollow? (I like retarded interview questions)

If you started a startup, what unique perk would you offer your developer employees?

Do you under- or overengineer?

Most unnecessary feature you ever had to create?

Most necessary feature your boss/client denied to approve?

I think I nailed it.

I had an interview on Friday. Never had I ever such a good one. Everything went so smoothly I'm amazed to this moment.

It started pretty much normally. Few questions about me and my CV. Next some soft skills check and few minutes talking in English to make sure I know how to speak.

Next, two funny trick questions. I hope I'll translate them good enough.
1) You've got 6 cups in a row. Three of them, next to each other, are empty. Remaining 3 are full. You've got one movement to make them stand alternately, ie. Full, empty, etc. or Empty, full etc.
2) You've got yourself a cake. Normal, birthday cake in a shape of a cylinder. On three cuts, you have to cut it in 8 equal pieces.

Next was technical interview. The only thing I couldn't answer to was a formula to get angle between camera and two objects on the scene. Something about cos x.

They told me that I was the only recruitee to make project using Hololens SDK. Other people made the images gallery in 2D only.

Also they were VERY impressed that I managed to send them fix that changed a lot of the gallery in an hour. No one was expecting it so fast since the feature wasn't all that simple. Or so they said. Code was written so it wasn't hard to implement this change.

Now I've got to wait at least a week for their response. As you could imagine, I'm nervously checking my email each time I get any spam.

I'd like to thank @fire-phoenix and @Root that were responding to my last posts about this new work tasks and current hardships. I know it's a bit too early to celebrate but I'm just so hyped for how well everything went 😀

So I landed this interview with a company that provided military simulations, to work as an android intern (mobile). And man was I intent on getting it, I could only dream of my first job being as a dev, for a company that developed cool software. 😯

I show up, pull out my laptop, go over some of my projects (crap at the time, since I was 16, but ChessAI ftw) and also show them an android app I developed.

Then, I pulled out my calculator and showed them a clock I'd made on it. That's probably when I lost them... ☹️

They asked me a couple questions about software development, like if I knew what agile was, or if I unit tested my code (didn't even know they existed at the time ☹️ ) , etc.

I had done research on the company and asked them questions about specific software and so on, also asked about what working there would look like, etc.

They never called.

I called.

They never answered.

😭

Ended up washing dishes. Honestly, fuck my life.

As an IT student learning only C# and Java, I was asked very specific questions on c++ about micro optimizations, and binary operations (why i haven't learned that i still wonder, i had to self teach it)

Because of not being able to answer that i was denied that internship, because fuck your and wanting to learn as a student.

I litterally mastered all questions asked the day after the interview just out of spite. It were all concepts i easily understood but they valued their paper based interview more than actually giving me some code to work with.

1. Trust no one even yourself
2. Ask questions even if they are stupid
3. Test your solutions, even manually
4. Write comments
5. Take your time to solve problem, even if it looks like easy see point 1
6. Take some time during work to get familiar with code and read something about technology that is part of your current work - even if you know it - see point 1
7. Always try to see a big picture - see point 2 - why is it implemented is more important then how is it implemented

All those developers complaining about how at their new job there is no source control process, no ci, no CD, no code reviews, no coding standards, no effective project management, next time maybe try asking some questions during the interview stage 🤔

Remember you are interviewing the company as much as they are interviewing you.

Making an Android app for a group project. Of course, no one besides me in the team knows anything about Java, or Android, or life, apparently.

A guy "worked" on some small feature for 90 minutes last night before calling me for help. He can't comprehend git so he sends me a message containing his spaghetti code. I proceed to bang it out quickly the right way with him on a Skype call watching my screen but he isn't asking any questions or contributing at all. We have an approaching deadline so I am beyond coaching this guy.

We go to test it out and I had forgotten a line. Simple fix, but it prevents the feature from working as intended. Rather than being remotely helpful the guy gets an attitude about how I write buggy code and that the feature should be robust. I fix it and he slinks back to silence.

Cool. Thanks for the help bro. Glad you could contribute.

Avoiding bad companies starts at the job interview. Remember that the job interview is not only for them to evaluate you, but also the other way around. Make sure to ask a lot of questions. What are they doing, how are they working, what help is there if you get stuck, are they doing code reviews, what will you be doing etc.

The job interview is the opportunity for you to get an inside view of the company. Don’t just accept any job because you are desperate. Luckily qualifies devs are much needed in companies.

Also, make sure to go to multiple job interviews so you can see the differences. I think it can be difficult to avoid in the beginning, but as you get more experience, you can sort of tell whether it’s a good or bad company at the job interview.

Though sometimes you are just unlucky. In that situation: leave. It is so good damn easy to get a job in this field.

Worst: The guy gave me 5 minutes to code a given assignment on paper. I did all the logic and told him I was missing a function whose name I would just Google. He told me I can't always Google. Well... I won't be coding on paper either.

Best: I was given the assignment to clone a part of a production site. Assignment was intended for 3 days and I was given 5 hours. Completition wasn't important, only structure and coding style counted. I cloned everything and even added new features.

You just can't always be in the zone. I hope more interviewers would take that into account and design better questions.

"Why is this code working? How did I do it?"

These unanswered questions keep me up at night.

"Change your algorithm"

Answers like this are why Stack Overflow almost becomes worthless when asking questions. I asked for some clarification why my code, which reads some files and outputs another, was hitting System.OutOfMemory exceptions. And that was the response I got.

"Change your algorithm"

How? In what manner should I be seeking to change my algorithm? OBVIOUSLY I SHOULD CHANGE MY ALGORITHM YOU WASTE OF OXYGEN. That was a given by the exception my program threw!

I swear to god, SO has got to be one of the most unwelcoming, condescending sites on the internet.

I had this one teacher that sucked some serioud dick. She refused to teach us what she was supposed to... Java.

Her teaching habits include: talking about her life problems for the whole class until the last 5 minutes to actually teach us knowledge that usually ended up being useless, refusing to answer questions and demanding that we use Google instead, and worst of all... the way she checked our programs to see if they would work. The absolute FIRST thing that she would do when she sat down at our computer, was open up our code, to see if it looked EXACTLY like her fucking code. She wouldn't even check if it worked first...

Honestly, teacher's like this completely piss me off and the students of this class learned more from the students with pre-knowledge than they did from studying the notes that the teacher gave in the last five minutes of class.

Today a new person joined the team.

Started bitching about the entire team for not having documentation for our already written code and software.

Asks the manager for a new task that he can take up so that he can write documentation for all our already coded works.

Manager says Go On.

Troubles me with 400 questions every 3 minutes in the name of Knowledge Transfer for writing his documentation.

Sends a proud mail to the team for writing this new documentation that no one else had time to do.
He is a newbie and had no other task to do anyway.

I seriously don't know if I should feel proud of him, for writing new documentation,
Or if he's doing this to defame me.

The team is filled with snakes.

Cs Student. We currently have a course on algorithms, where we have to implement something in Java, test it with some sample inputs and in the end submit it to an online judge, so far so good. So why a rant? Well there's this one person, who strugles with programing and asks me a lot of questions. Usually I tell her, could you send me your code, so I can have a look at what doesn't work/where you made a typo/what ever. My thoughts: let's just copy it my IDE, take a look at the error message, and that should do it.

Guess how I got the code: As a few photos, taken by her mobile phone (as the code doesn't fit on one screen...)! Just send me the fucking file, or post it to gist.github.com or pastie.org or what ever fucking code sharing tool you want! Make a fucking git repo, I'll even live with SVN or just a .txt file by mail. But for the love of Linus Torvalds, stop sending me crapy pictures of your crappy code! For fucks sake!

I'm in college now, and my mom sometimes helps me when I get stuck finding a bug in my code. She has a degree in CS, even though she barely used it, so she understands the basics. It's like a rubber duck, but better, because she can ask me questions, and answering them often leads me to the answers. She also listens to me go on and on about random topics I'm learning, even though she isn't interested... basically, she's great!

I am extremely particular about writing good READMEs in my repositories. I make sure that it has everything from prerequisites to run the code and tests on a new machine to how to actually run it (and the tests) and everything in between.

Despite all that I was asked questions that should have been avoided if you had seen the README.

One of these times was by a junior DevOps asking me about an error which was clearly due to him running the code without a virtual environment. Pings me with the entire stacktrace, I go to his desk and tell him to install the environment, which he does. 3 minutes later, another error message.

He was running the wrong script. I go to his desk again. Open the repository. Show him the README. Show him the section titled "To run the pipeline"!

There's a reason they're called README. You're supposed to READ them! 😑

HR Firms are the worst!!
Just wasted 30 mins of my life.
Interviewer: Tell me about experience.
[ me after talking about various project I have worked on/ build using (js, ruby, React js, git...bla bla bla).
[ 10mins later answering pretty dumb question ]
Interviewer: Do you know about coding?
Me: jeez really, c'mon... is that a question - I just told you about my X years of experience and you asking me if I know how to code?
[Interviewer look at another dumb questions from her list]
Me: You know there are so many different broken links on your websites right? on the landing page there are many links that direct you to the HTML templates.
Interview: thanks...

Do not steer away from projects using technologies you may not know or be comfortable in. Instead worked your hardest to get it right, ask lots of questions and don't be insulted if people find issues in your code. It's a learning experience.

Taking a class on C and machine-level code for school and I have my final tomorrow. After the entire semester, people are still posting questions to piazza asking how strings work and other students are giving wrong answers. Not to mention all of the correct answers are posted in our lecture notes and countless places online. Seriously people, why are you a CompSci major if you can't even figure out how you declare a string after 10 weeks of coding?

A misconception that software engineers just sit in front of their laptops and code 40 hours a week, with no social interaction.

A software engineer’s job is actually pretty social. Personally, I probably spend around half of my time interacting with people. This could be partially due to 1:1, team, and other meetings. But a large part of it is spent in bouncing off ideas about your project with your project mates (especially during the planning phase), chiming in the conversations about some recent or urgent problems to help find or propose solutions, answering others’ questions, organizing some events, etc.

Of course, I do need some dedicated uninterrupted time to focus on programming and to get into the zone, but it’s certainly not the only activity I do at work. The main point to understand is that the software engineering is not a solitary, but a social job.

Overall, I’m very happy with my profession. The enjoyment I get out of my work vastly outweighs all of these points combined.

Today I looked at some code from our CTO. He used plain SQL Statements with huge selects and no prepared statements.

I asked him:
1. why dont you build some helpers or even use some frameworks?
2. why are there no prepared statements?

His answer (to both questions)
We do not need that. That just uses too much ressources and time. It's more cleaner and simpler this way.

My Face: 😵

My coach during my first internship. The first 4 weeks he took the time to pair program at least 3 hours a day with me. He needed the time for his own work but still invested in me. His technical prowess was insane. His code was so easy to read that it took me less than 3 weeks to get to know the 500,000+ lines codebase. He could explain the most complex stuff at such a fundamental level. After those 4 weeks of coaching I wasn't an intern anymore. I was an actual member of the team. Also learned a lot of useful non-technical skills like planning and communication from him.
Then after those 4 weeks he resigned and started working for another company. At the time I found it a dick move. It took me months to realize he managed to get an intern with 0 experience so comfortable around a code base that everybody treated me as a worthy colleague and engineer. It was a matter of days before people would ask me hard questions and I found I could answer each and everyone of them.

Pure sensei this guy was. Such a different level of knowledge and ability. I hope to become such a model for all of my students.

You know what I always hated about Stack Overflow?

When a newbie asks a question and really wants to learn something they get downvoted for 'we're not your teacher. Go learn it somewhere else'

When someone else asks a question and just expects Stack Overflow to magically produce working code for him they also get downvoted for 'we're not a code generator'

When someone finally asks a 'good question' but mentions in the last line it's homework they also get downvoted for 'We won't do your homework'

They also don't tolerate fun or opinions.

I never actually participated in Stack Overflow because to me it felt that whatever I asked, it would get closed for god knows why. And when I actually answered questions, and wanted to help someone, I would get downvoted for 'don't make someone else homework' or 'don't waste your time if they're not willing to put effort in it'

I still always 'used' Stack Overflow but read-only thanks to Google.

Anyone else feels/felt the same way?

Looking for job opportunities, one grabbed my attention and I decided to apply. First, I had to fill a form with 40 questions, explaining and justifying development processes, best practices and overall knowledge. Ok, no problem. Form submitted, and I see a step 2. Now I have to build a single page site from scratch, and send another form with code, link, and more justifications regarding development. After that, my application will be sent.

Then I found this observation, saying the position was for a freelancer, that will receive work occasionally. Not a full time position as I thought.

Sometimes cleaning bathrooms sounds a better option.

I had the most depressing realization last night after I spent a good chunk of the day answering questions on Stack Overflow.

I can usually understand their code, I often understand their questions, and I know how to help and when to recommend that they completely change direction. I'm effectively trying to mentor total strangers using a few code samples and paragraphs. I'm happy to do that, and I'm good at it.

Then I realized - these people all have programming challenges of their own to solve. I work for a so-called "consulting" agency where I sit around for weeks because they have nowhere to put me. When they do find me a client it's some company that has no idea how to develop software and no interest in how I can help. They just want to add another developer into the giant mess they've created to keep doing what they're already doing. I'm still using any of the skills I put to work all day long helping people on Stack Overflow.

In other words, the people who need my help figuring out how to write code actually have the jobs writing code, and I don't. Clearly I'm doing something wrong.

Ironically, when I go to one of these companies with a lead developer who doesn't know how to write a unit test or put together three lines of coherent code, that person tells me to just follow what everyone else is doing without making any improvements. Then he goes on Stack Overflow to figure out how to do his job, and chances are I'm the one answering his questions.

As my wife always reminds me, I work in air conditioning so I shouldn't complain. It's a stable company with nice people and it pays the bills. But I sure would like to develop some software in my software development job instead of treating it like a personal hobby.

One day browsing the internet, I find a website that is hiring web developers. I was curious, so I decided to see the requirements.

Job : To manage this website
Skills Required

6+ years Experience of
HTML
CSS
JavaScript
Node.js
Vue.js
TypeScript
Java
PHP
Python
Ruby
Ruby on Rails
ASP.NET
Perl
C
C++
Advanced C++
C#
Assembly
RUST
R
Django
Bash
SQL

Built at least 17 stand alone desktop apps without any dependencies with pure C++

Built at least 7 websites alone.
3+ years Hacking experience
built 5 stand-alone mobile with Java, Dart and Flutter
7800+ reputations on stack overflow.
Answered at least 560 questions on stack overflow
Have at least 300 repositories on GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket.
Written 1000+ lines of code on each single repository.

Salary: $600 per month.

If he learnt all languages one by one at age 0, he will be 138 now!

I'm a junior dev working with some very proprietary applications. The point is, I can't Google for code solutions at all.

The seniors are all very put upon and too busy to offer much actual help unless it's urgent.

I beg for assistance until I'm blue in the face and eventually stumble my way to something resembling the solution.

I get one of them to review my code, and while they do I point out all the places I STILL need help.

They don't answer any of those questions but damned if they don't have opinions on how my comments should be formatted.

Aaauuuuggghhhh

So my company hired this very old guy. The oldest developer I have worked with. I feel they took him just because of diversity.

Because he was absolutely incompetent.

Nothing he wrote ever worked, he got in conflict with everyone, made stupid jokes at meetings, asked the dumbest questions. His stories would hang for weeks, hopping sprint over sprint. Once he delivered something, his code had to be re-written from scratch. A code review couldn't even be applied as the code was worthless, so it just made sense to reassign his tasks to someone else and move on.

So after much drama he was let go. It was maybe two years ago and I recently connected with him on LinkedIn. He's changed four or more jobs since then. Prior to coming to our company he also job-hopped all the time (but most likely he was actually fired every time). His average job duration was like 6 months. Apart from that, he had a 20+ year stay with some government agency.

I fail to grasp how he ever gets hired anywhere with all the red flags. Over two decades with some govt agency (in my country they are all crap). Then change jobs every half an year or so. Then the asshole attitude. And finally, they probably never asked him any technical questions, because he knew nothing. Our interns who were just one month into the job were better by a WIDE margin.

Declined a job offer with a startup, partly because of imposter syndrome. Applied for position as programmer, showed up for interview and got cold feet when it turned out they actually wanted/needed a senior programmer/chief technology officer and offered me the position after having asked me no technical questions, seen none of my code or previous projects.

Still, it was a job that paid money... And I'm still jobless two months later :(

A project I'm working on uses Elastic for internal monitoring and logs. The customer asked to access those logs - not something we'd normally do, but it's isolated from other things we use and there's no critical data there, so what the heck, let them have it.

Ever since, we're getting tons of questions like "There are tons of [insert random info message] all the time, do you have any plans to resolve them?" and it gets to the point where I'm just about ready to scream back "NO, SUZAN, BOOKING NOT COMPLETED MANS THE USER F###ING CANCELLED IT, IT'S NOT SOMETHING I CAN FIX IN THE CODE"

Edit: the customer's name isn't actually Suzan

Add a course that teaches people how to write and formulate questions.

So that people don't write questions like, "my code no work, plz halp".

Ask yourself a couple of simple questions:
Do you like to code?
Do you like to learn new things and improve?
Do you like to solve problems and spend hours on a single detail until it finally works?

If your answers contain a "no", then development is probably not for you. You will hate it and you will suck at it. And you will make lifes of devs who actually love it miserable. So do something else.

How come it is so hard to find good developers. Have been doing interviews for a couple of weeks now (for a senior PHP developer role).

First round is me talking about the function and company, asking questions about candidates experience, wishes and we usually end in some tech conversations. Most of the resumes I got are pretty fucking good. I mean, experience with low-level languages, experience with the problems we need to solve here, contributions to open-source, experience in R and MathLab etc etc. On paper they look perfect.

For the second round I give them an assessment which they can do at home on their own machine in their own time. It's not a hard one, just some mathmatical problems they need to solve. A quick google GIVES the answer (no joke!!). But that's OK, I look at their code cleanliness, proper use of commenting so I can determine if they are solo-developers or fit good in a team and if they abstract repeated functions and make sure that they take their work seriously, you know the drill.

It pisses me off that I get BROKEN FUCKING CODE WHICH DOES NOT EVEN RUN and that I get code back which I look at and makes me vomit instantly, I mean, DO YOU EVEN TAKE YOUR PROFESSION SERIOUS? How dare you to ask for 50k the year, a lease-car, extra bonusses AND YOUR FUCKING CODE SPITS OUT COMPLETLY WRONG ANSWERS OR DOES NOT EVEN RUN WHAT THE FUCK DUDE GO BACK TO FROM WHICH EVER HOLE YOU CRAWLED OUT AND STOP WASTING OTHER PEOPLES TIME WITH YOUR FUCKING INCOMPENTENCE...

I started my internship at the end of the year..
Fuck my ass!!! This code I have to work with is a huge pile of shit.
The code base I need to work with is around 40k LOC. It is a mixture of C++, C, Java, Python, Bash and I think I saw some lonely js files around.

A list of awesome parts:
- Paths are hard coded.
- Redundant code everywhere
- No documentation or inline comments available

Most of the comments in the code are just old code that is not used anymore. But the cherry on the turd is the class that should provide all kind of useful functions in my daily routine. About ninety percent of the functions have the same description or nothing. Sometimes a function name says "readSomethingFromSomewhere" but instead it writes something to a file. It is really confusing and I need to check everything twice instead of rely on what the function name promises.
I have also learned why copy paste isn't that good. The brief descriptions of every method in a files are always the same.

getName() - Description: Fork child process
getIp() - Description: Fork child process
getIpv6() - Description: Fork child process.

Surprise: None of these functions forks a child process. :D

Another awesome feature is the thing that they store up to five different versions of libraries. Everyone with slight modifications but no hint which one you need to use. Sometimes it is the newest, sometimes the oldest which is running in production. Another case of try and error.
Oh and my dev machine is a potato with a power supply and a fan. I started with NetBeans and every time I compiled the code it sounds like the machine wants to lift off and leave for a better place. (At this point I switched to Emacs and everything runs smoothly now)

At first I thought that I'm just not that good at coding and understanding a big project from scratch but some colleagues have the same problem. The whole system is very inflexible and it is all about "std::cout"-debugging to check if your changes do what you want them to do.

Currently I'm just trying to fix this mess to make the life for the next student or employee easier. The first month was just frustrating as hell. I need to ask so many questions and most of the time the answer was "I don't know, haven't touched this code in years". Needless to say that my progress isn't that awesome but at least I get a nice payment for 20 hours of work a week.

Things you shouldn’t be:

1. Racist
2. That guy that interrupts the person next to him while he is trying to write code every 2 fucking minutes and asks dumb and meaningless questions

The feeling when random dudes downvote a question, because a guy who finally earned some points on SO dared to format the code with `<code>`<br> He pasted code, log, even explained a little bit and ~500 point guy even flags it like _unclear_ although there's clearly visible import error.

I mean... as an answerer or moderator, I'd be damn ashamed for such behavior! I have absolutely no problem kick a person with words + explanation in my answer or comment, so that (s)he remembers to ask better questions and feels bad about that, because nooby questions are already answered so many times there.

But to downvote because of formatting even if you have a permission to edit and a flag for low quality or because you can't read ~40 lines of log makes you just a retard and hurt the whole remaining community of guys like me who find time to sit there and answer questions to help another people.

Fucking retards littering my code review.
I had posted some important questions in my comment (essential in order for the code review to move forward) and this asshole posted some stupid out of context meta crap comments no way related to the subject of the review pushing my questions out to the point that a lot of scrolling is needed to see them. Now I need to get everyone’s attention back to the point that matters. Why does this happen to me ? This actually happens quite a lot with other forums as well. Trash mouths going off topic.

It's sometimes good I work remotely from the rest of my team.... So other can't see how pissed I'm while chatting with them...

Just did an afternoon basically hand holding someone... And well this is the 3rd day... And the original instructions I gave them was: here's the problem, here the code fix, now you need to change it for the other 10 APIs it affects (OS migration).

I have another problem I need to figure out....

Yes I could do it all myself and it would be faster but I don't want to be the only person who can do this stuff either...

But can you just try to use your brain and figure things out before asking how to ....

I don't know am I that much more experienced than everyone else so I just know how to figure things out quickly, know to the learn efficiently? Ask the right questions to Google?

How hard is it to just learn to Google your problems... 80% of the questions u ask me I either tell you to Google it or actually end up googling the answer myself...

As a freelancer I get side requests from bigger development companies from time to time that don't have the time or capacity to deal with it themselves.

So usually the employees are pretty friendly but they do not like to read any of the documentation I send with the code. They call me up with stupid questions that are usually answered in the documentation.

I had sent them everything they had requested last Thursday so they called me on Friday to ask the usual stupid question. However, this time I had beforehand decided to have some fun! I told them I had to leave for the weekend and to call me back on Monday. Of course they called me during the weekend, but I didn't answer. So they called me today.

What I had done before handing it all in was I had named the methods that I wrote illogically, while stating and explaining the whole situation in the documentation extra clearly.

So I answered the call today and the first thing they did was apologize. Since I didn't answer their calls during the weekend they finally realized that the best way to go is reading the documentation instead of calling me all the time. They were freaked out at first because they thought there was something completely wrong with the code and they had to tell their client that the deadline had to be pushed back.

We are all good now :)

My best code review experience?

Company hired a new department manager and one of his duties was to get familiar with the code base, so he started rounds of code reviews.
We had our own coding standards (naming, indentation, etc..etc) and for the most part, all of our code would pass those standards 100%.

One review of my code was particularly brutal. I though it was perfect. In-line documentation, indentation, followed naming standards..everything. 'Tom' kept wanting to know the 'Why?'

Tom: 'This method where it validates the amount must be under 30. Why 30? Why is it hard-coded and not a parameter?'
<skip what it seemed like 50 more 'Why...?' questions>
Me: "I don't remember. I wrote that 2 years ago."
Tom: "I don't care if you wrote it yesterday. I have pages of code I want you to verify the values and answer 'Why?' to all of them. Look at this one..."

'Tom' was a bit of a hard-ass, but wow, did I learn A LOT. Coding standards are nice, but he explained understanding the 'What' is what we are paid for. Coders can do the "What" in their sleep. Good developers can read and understand code regardless of a coding standard and the mediocre developers use standards as a crutch (or worse, used as a weapon against others). Great developers understand the 'Why?'.

Now I ask 'Why?' a lot. Gotten my fair share of "I'm gonna punch you in the face" looks during a code review, but being able to answer the 'Why?' solidifies the team with the goals of the project.

Project with a single developer. Main automation used daily by 50% of the team past few years.
...
git server setup? done
hands on workshops? done
invited to ask more questions/for assistance? yes
....1 month later....
Q: Why haven't you pushed your code to the repo? Did you encountered any issues?
A: Why it has to be in the repo when the source code is available on my computer and I copy it into shared folder from time to time?

Everything is set up and was served on a silver plate. I would even assist with the commits before they get used to using it. More than half a year have passed. Yet the source codes are nowhere to be found.

A friend saw me on stack overflow and said 'wow, 4,000 points - you must do this all day.' I explained that I just do it to reinforce my understanding and not really for points(although those are useful for bounties). I showed them an account with 22k and tried to show how one might choose questions for maximum points vs quick solves for noobs etc. I write overly thorough answers to try and pin-point the blind spot as opposed to just fixing other people's code. It's not often rewarded by points. My friend - conspiracist - was convinced that the 20+k accounts were cheating the system.

At my old work we had a stack overflow account just for asking embarrassing questions that you didn't want on the company record. Silly, I know. Occasionally some of the guys would use it to have fake arguments or just cause trouble for fun / vote each other's stuff up.

So - I reached into 1Password and signed into that account and showed him that you could essentially vote up your answers but that it's not likely how people get points. I voted up my last 5 personal answers as an example and made some comment like 'that is right.' And that was that. Closed the computer. The next day my account was suspended and I was reprimanded for sockpuppeting. So, - in case you think you can get away with cheap tricks - you can't, which is nice to know - but after reading the email - my face was red for hours. How embarrassing! Not quite as bad as that time I got caught stealing a G.I. Joe action figure at the mall...

My fav interview was at my previous job. It was a junior position. The lead was a very friendly and wise guy. He kept pushing me (positively) with subtle hint until I get a code right. After completing each problem he give me elaborate explanation about the meaning of the problem and how to approach it from other angles. It felt like I'm in front of buddha who is making me realize the inner working of the world. Didn’t get 50% of the questions right, still he recruited me because "You were very curious and you were having fun solving problems". Best one and half years of my career.

I’ve been at this job 4 months and I feel like I’ve been here long enough to make an accurate opinion of it. From day one I have not felt welcomed. There is no communication within the team.. none of my questions are ever answered.. and when I do ask questions I get snarky answers. I don’t expect my hand to be held, but as someone who is new, I’d like you to give me guidance. Especially since the code is mostly legacy and no one else on the team seems to know anything about anything.

Oh and there are not daily stand ups, project managers, or direction in the tickets themselves.

I guess I should have expected this on the first day when I asked for a SIP or documentation on how to get my environment setup I was practically laughed out of the office and then had the nerve to ask me why it took me the entire day to get 5 environments up and running.. not giving me the custom mappings or the global UDFs.

Today was my last straw.. when I asked a question in three different forms of communication on multiple different channels and was never given an answer.. and then was asked why I did something the way I did instead of doing it the way they wanted me to.

I think the saddest thing is that I felt tricked into this. I was told this position was going to be one way but ended up being something else. I was excited to share my knowledge and best practices to the team. Instead, I’m an outcast and get only be negativity and excuses when I politely bring up suggestions.

I no longer have the will to code here.

Messed Up my first Coding Interview and that too of Google!

My first rant.

The first question was not an easy one. I cracked it though. Happy. Very Happy! I had 40 minutes left for the second question. And then came the nightmare. Okay, my foolishness.

I compiled my code. Compilation error.
Declared variables. Compilation Error!
Imported Libraries. Compilation Error!
Changed vector to an array. compilation Error!
Checked the loop for edge cases. Compilation Error!
Cannot use an IDE too. Tab's change is not allowed.

My score was still ZERO and I had only 15 minutes left.

Then lazily my eyes went to the language selected. It was C. I wrote the code in C++.

I mean HOW CAN I BE SOOOO STUPID??
I was coding in an entirely different language!

But..But, the story doesn't end here.
Next, I copied the code and switched languages. NOOO, my code was lost. I couldn't paste my code!!

I checked the timer- 5 minutes left.
Somehow, I managed to rewrite the code. And submitted it at the last minute.

I have no idea what will be the results. I just solved 1/2 questions.

SAD but FRUSTRATED at my stupidity :(

Rereading old code I wrote and asking myself questions while reading it...then reading the next line, a comment, answering those very questions.

Past self. Thank you very much. 😎

The company I work at sends their developers out to other companies to help them work on projects and help them in other ways (advice when communicating to customers of on demand software for example).

While not on a project you are working in house training trainees and interns. Part of that is teaching them to show initiative and treating them as full developers. The 30 interns all discussed a git flow and code format.
During the third sprint (two weeks sprints) a team messaged me if I wanted to check their merge request for the sprint.

It took me a glance at the first file to know they didnt do any review themselves. I used my flywheel to check all their changes and without being able to read the code I saw indentation was all over the place, inconsistent bracket placements etc. I let them know I wouldnt check their code until it was according to their own standards.
Two days later I got the message to check it again. At first glance the indentation was fine so I started reading the code. Every single thing was hardcoded, not made to support mobile (or any resolution other than 1920×1080).
A week later they improved it and still not good. Gave them a few pointers like I would for any colleague and off they went to fix things. The code became worse and indentation was all over the place.

I told them the next time it shouldnt be a quick glance to be able to reject it again. By this time other teams came to me asking why it wasnt merged yet and I explained it to them. One of the teams couldnt do anything u til this was merged so I told them to implement it themselves. I was surprised that 4 teams came to me asking about a merge request, that was every team except the team whose pull request it was.

4 weeks after the intitial sprint the other team made a merge request and I had three small comments and then an hour later it was merged.

The other team messaged me why their merge request did went through (still havent seen any of their team in person, Im sitting 10 meters away from them behind a wall)
They also said that it was easier for them because they started from scratch. Thats when I called them in to discuss it all and if they were not interns but full time developers they would have been fired. I told them communication is key and that if you dont understand something you come in person to ask about it. They all knew I like teaching and have the patience to explain a single thing ten times, but the initiative should be theirs.

One of the team members is my current coworker and he learned his lesson by that. The others stopped with their study and started doing something completely else.

TL;DR
Merge request is open for 4 weeks, in the end another team started from scratch and finished it within a week. The original team didnt ask me questions or come to me in person, where other teams did.

DISCLAIMER: some of you might find it harsh, but in our experience it works the best for teaching and we know when people don't dare to ask questions and we help them in that too. It's all about the soft skills at our company.

Anyone else here with anxieties, depression or what-not? I feel this could get heavy, but I feel this is the only place I could write this. So...

My 18-month-long programming course is slowly coming to an end. Time has come for us to be sent out to job interviews at various companies.
Every single time an interview comes up, I feel the exact same mix of my inconfidence, constant anxiety, "I'm gonna throw up", impatience and whatever else is there in my head. I figured it would get easier with each consecutive interview but it hasn't.
The questions they ask make me sick. The atmosphere is unfathomable. Robots are more humane.

- Why do you want to work with us?
I need money for my meds and something to down them with? I willingly put myself through this shit to become a corporate slave, what else is there to say? I can only hope I'll be writing any code here.

- Where do you see yourself in 2-3 years?
Far away from anything remotely related to an HR department of any sort?

- Had you been a fruit, which one would you be? Whatever would come out of my tears blended with semen? What the fuck is even that question?

Of course those aren't my actual responses, but conjuring the IRL ones to finish the process is a serious burden. And those are only some HR ones. After this barrage of questions they want my lifeless, flaccid body to write code. I mean ok, it's a software dev gig, but I already gave all I had on self-clairvoyance.

We'll be in touch!

Is there a strategy you guys have when you go to an interview? Any tips for taming the acrid beast running around in your brain? Is it too much to talk with a human in a humane language without "15 buzzwords to make the recruiter moist"?

The "Hot Network Questions" in the right side of every StackOverflow page.

Physics, Electronics, World building, Programming puzzles and code golf, Aviation, Skeptics...

Rant on anti devs.

I helped my friend crack a fairly simple hackerank. The questionnaire was basic JavaScript questions and little on CSS selectors nth child. The test is finished in half hour instead of 75 mins.

5 months later. He calls again and ask if he can get the question solutions (code snippets). I didn't have those but curious why he needed it. He says he wants to put that solutions to Github. So would look on resume. This is not even a project just code snippet with a for loop. He just wants any codebase to upload to his profile.

My ears are bleeding. It makes me sad that some people had to do Masters in computer science purely out of societal pressure. Just because software development is booming field a lot of folks who are not genuinely interested in development are being forced into the industry.

Ok, time to eat some humble pie. I seem to remember ranting about the fact we were going to use an offshore dev house a while back, and I'd convinced myself they were going to be absolutely useless.

Far from it. It's certainly meant I've had something else to do in managing them, and I can't say everything has been completely rosy - but overall, they're a bunch of hard working, decent devs who write good, well-tested code, are receptive to feedback in code reviews and take the initiative and ask questions when they need to. Shame on me for initially thinking otherwise - I'll miss working with them when I leave this place.

A fellow mate I graduated with recently asked me to help him with his interview sample coding questions. Basically he had to write a function to test different conditions using Java. I wrote the function, pushed it to git and asked him to go check it out. He told me afterwards that, my function was wrong..lol, really? (BTW, I tested it and it produced the results the company wanted)

I asked him to send me his code and all he did was write a "main", created an instant variable and passed it in a switch statement. Mind you, the test condition was big that, switch statement was the worse to use...

I told him to do whatever he wants but he should remember that the question wants a damn function given a certain input. Didn't hear from him again...then later asked me to help him with a SQL question...hah, I didn't even bother looking at the question.

The Setting:

Ola Cabs (One of the biggest competitors of Uber, for those who don’t know) comes to college to recruit software devs:

✅ Pre-placement talk

Now time for the aptitude/code round. Hackerearth used as the solution to run the test and compile code, as well as check the result immediately. Or so I thought.

3 programming questions, 2 hours.

The problem:
Me: *Write the code for the first question* (and I know it’s correct)

Me: Clicks “Compile and run”

Compiler: *Compiling*

*LITERALLY ONE FUCKING HOUR LATER*

Compiler: *Still compiling*

Hackerearth. What a fucking joke. Though the course of the HOUR I waited, I kept questioning the recruiter head from Ola and his response was:

Recruiter: “Try the other program, it’s possibly a problem with your code. I’ll check at my backend also, hold on.”

YOU FUCKING DIMWIT. MY CODE IS PERFECT AND EVEN IF IT WASN’T IT WOULDN’T TAKE MORE THAN A MINUTE (If you’re factoring in absolutely worst cases) TO COMPILE THIS SMALL ASS FUCKING PROBLEM’S CODE.

In the meanwhile I even coded one of the other remaining questions’ solution and the shit still didn’t work.

At the end of the 2 hour time limit, I’d finished code for all 3, the recruiter stops us all from coding and says:

Recruiter: “Just submit your code, we will evaluate it and get back to you.”

Like fucking hell, asshole.

*One hour post interview*

EVERYONE who attempted the aptitude code round (At least 30 of us) receive messages on our phones:

“Unfortunately you did not clear the aptitude round and we will not be able to take your application forward.”

FUCK YOU OLA. IN ONE FUCKING HOUR YOU “EVALUATED” ALL OF OUR CODE? FUCK YOU HACKEREARTH FOR YOUR SHIT FUCKING EXECUTION OF A “SOLUTION”. Maybe test your own fucking product before offering a solution to companies.

Fucking lost opportunity.

Dont become a dev if you:

- Cant sit in the office for 8-10 hours a day

- Dont know how to google information/ errors, instead you interrupt your teammates with stupid questions every 5 minutes

- Are a perfectionist and don't like constant change.

- Are neurotic and give up easily. If you get triggered about broken or messy things to the point where it ruins your day to you and everyone else around you. You need to separate your work from your life.

- Don't have good communication skills. Worst I saw was a guy who speaks with a stutter(nobody understands him) and also writes very poorly (nobody understands his emails). Also he gets very angry when you ask additional questions to clarify what he said. How can you work with someone like that?

- Are very sensitive to critique. I prefer someone telling me that my code is shit and telling me why, instead of feeding me delusions and false validation.

- Dont know how to balance working in team and working solo. Nobody likes lone wolfs who are arrogant and not in sync with the team. But also nobody likes to drag teammates who cant think for themselves and even after years of spent in the field are required constant spoonfeeding because they are unable to google and teach themselves with trial and error.

Programming is 5% writing code full of bugs , 30% googling , 20% crying,20% checking your downvoted questions on stackoverflow, 25 % thinking of switching career

Now, I started in a new position as a dev back in September 2020 - after some starting pleasantries like "how are you", "whats up", "how is your weekend" the working relationship with my office partner soured.

It started with asking me TOTALLY random questions while my headset was on and i was "in the zone". These were questions like: "where should I buy a car", "Why is the virus spreading so fast". I tried to answer politely but made it very clear that when the headset is on my brain and every fibre in my body is inside the code and f---ing it.

Then it escalated, she called me 9.30PM on xmas day and wondered if i needed the API we are using........ Which i most certainly did not.

Now she hates me because I asked to move to another office and was granted that request 15 minutes after asking....

Need to learn JavaScript.
My question is: What good books/websites/ youtubers etc are out there that have good explanations.
Thx in advance.

Stack overflow bots that will post vulnerable code snippets in the response section of popular questions and then upvote each others code and push it to the top.

I was junior developer. My friend recommended me for JavaScript Senior developer in the company he was working. He had settle the interview without asking me. I knew a little of javascript, but I was not ready for this interview at all and I knew that.

So I went to the interview. The questions were very difficult and complex for me, I answered two question of ~15. I was very upset, I was sweаty and blushed ... one of the most uncomfortable moments in my career.

After the questions, the interviewer decided to give me a MacBook to do an exercise with JavaScript to see me in action. The exercise was easy, but MacBook ... Damn it, I saw a MacBook for the second time in my life. I knew the solution of the task, but I was very slow in implementation because of Mac..

After 15 minutes of slow coding and sweating, the interviewer said "OK, just finish it at home and send the code to my email...".

When I got home, I made the perfect solution for 30 minutes and I sent it to him. The only answer was "ok, tnx" and that guy didn't call me anymore.

This is kind of rejection I think ;)

1. Learn to use Google.
2. If you don't know English, learn it. Most good resources are in English.
3. Be patient and don't give up. You'll get *very* frustrated, believe me.
4. Don't bother other people with stupid questions, refer to item 1. Only ask in forums/answer hubs if you can't find what you're looking for through Google. Yes, that means going into Google's second result page.
5. Don't get discouraged if you don't have friends your age that like programming. You'll find people with the same interest later :)
6. If you don't understand stuff right away, don't worry. Copy code from YouTube tutorials and change them a bit. No Ctrl + C Ctrl + V though, copy it by writing. Little by little it'll start making sense and soon enough you'll be able to write stuff of your own.
7. Most importantly, have fun!

(This advice comes from someone that started programming at age 10 in a county that doesn't speak English)

I once interviewed for a role at Bank of America. The interview process started off well enough, the main guy asked some general questions about career history and future goals. Then it was off to the technical interviewers. The first guy was fine. Asked appropriate questions which he clearly understood the answers to.

The next guy up, however, was what I like to call an aggressive moron. After looking at my resume, he said I see you listed C++. To which I said, yes I have about 7 years of experience in it but I've mostly been using python for the past few years so I might be a bit rusty. Great he said, can you write me a function that returns an array?

After I finished he looked at my code, grinned and said that won't work. Your variable is out of scope.

(For non C programmers, returning a local variable that's not passable by value doesn't work because the local var is destroyed once the function exits. Thus I did what you're supposed to do, allocate the memory manually and then returned a pointer to it)

After a quick double take and verifying that my code did work, I asked, um can you explain why that doesn't work as I'm pretty sure it does.

The guy then attempted to explain the concept of variable scope to me. After he finished I said, yes which is why I allocated the memory manually using the new operator, which persists after the function exits.

Einstein then stared really hard at my code for maybe 10 to 15 seconds. Then finally looked up said ok fine, but now you have a memory leak so your code is still wrong.

Considering a memory leak is by definition an application level bug, I just said fine, any more questions?

My colleague can be so fucking annoying I’m close to snapping. It’s morning, I just got it, didn’t have any coffee yet and he asks me “what did you do while I was gone?” (He was away sick a few days). So I start explaining to him the code changes we did and he takes it as an opportunity to interrupt me and ask more questions during my explanation. Mostly because he thinks it’s amusing. I continue explaining not giving in to his shit and he continues interrupting me and tries to make other team members laugh at his stupid face. No one does. I finally tell him to shut up and listen and he does.

It’s like having a kid run around, focusing on every sound other than what is important and trying to be funny when all that’s happening is everyone thinking he’s and asshole that should shut the fuck up. ARGH!!! So annoying.

So recruiter scheduled an interview and he gave me the hands on problem they'll ask me to code.

He says I'll get 60-90 minutes... so I tried coding it and I've come up with some questions I will be asking the interviewer before I start:

1. How professional do you want it?
2. Can I use my own libraries so I don't have to write the boilerplate stuff? (That should cut-off about 30 mins and make the logic much clearer)
3. Can I write it on a PC?
4. Can I not write the Imports
5. Can we just skip this? As we all know, you can see 90% of the elements needed for your program in some form in my GitHub repos.

This happened a couple months ago, but I wanted to share this one, since it still baffles me.

We were hiring and had this weird candidate. The team said no to the guy after the interview, management still hired him and pressured us to train him, which cost us tons of hours we had to somehow squeeze in during a hot phase of our project.

After almost 3.5 weeks training he had to hand in a small component. What he handed in was brainlessly duplicated, half of the stuff in there wasn't even used, the other half wasn't working properly. At the review we asked questions about the code he handed in - he could not answer one of them.
We then had a big argument with management to let the guy go, which they eventually unhappily agreed to.
The icing on that cake of a story: Turns out, the guy was hired as a senior dev with a way higher paycheck than most of the devs on the team. Wtf?!

First task as Python delevoper intern - fix non-essential for business app, written by an intern last year. Apparently that intern didn't even know what an object is. In Python, where everything, including functions, is an object.

I have to fix it piece by piece. It would be faster to throw old code and start from scratch.

Yet I'm glad they gave me this task. I feel like I'm learning a lot working with this shitty code. And they assigned a great person to help me should I have any questions/problems.

I could not be happier.

Just had an interview with our new potential product manager. I companioned our CEO, if technical questions arise...

First, he came to our office, to the interview, and never..never looked at our application. Neither he saw some screenshots, review's or anything related to the product. As a potential product manager...gasp

And he really tried to impress me, by mentioning what a great full stack developer he also is (LOL), with years of experience in frontend and backend.
But, since I am an android software developer, he mentioned he don't like java. But he loves java script...

Me: ehhh what? So you compare apples to oranges. Why do you don't like java? (And I could image a lot things ...)

Him: because unlike JavaScript, java is a mess when writing code.

Me: ok Iam done.

Can "being lost in Hot Network Questions column of StackOverflow" be a valid reason of late delivery of code?

The most scary stuff when changing jobs is not the fear if the code is spaghetti or not. It’s onboarding and how the company expect new devs to learn the domain.

When I joined the company I am working on, they did not have at all documentation in regards to domain knowledge. I had to ping devs who have been with the company for years so they can explain to me. Product Managers are useless. They can explain the ticket but cannot point me in the codebase and DB fields that that ticket needs to touch.

They would say to me “Ask what you don’t know “. MF, I don’t know what I don’t know. How am I supposed to come up with questions?

Cherry on top are JIRA “Stories”. It’s title and 1 sentence and it was expected of me to do the discovery.

Fast forward, there are still things that I am learning. I work in an industry that is very complicated and has a lot of information to take. I don’t get burned out of code and tasks. I get burned out of trying to understand my tickets and connect them with the code and DB.

I have so many questions in my head…

Should I focus doing front-end or back-end?

For mobile dev, flutter or react native?

Kanban or Agile?

Google cloud or AWS?

Switch to Linux or stick to WSL2?

Solidity or Rust for blockchain apps?

Best low-code that my dev peers won’t hate me for using?

If starting a project,
Bootstrapping or chase after VCs?

Do you guys use conditioner when you run out of shaving cream?

Keto or vegan?

Is milk really that bad for our body??

Am I the only one who encounters these dickhead teachers, who live in a world, where they think that you have just their subject?

I mean that kind of professor, who shows up 30 minutes late to a lecture, sends you source code with no commetary because fuck you with a rusty fork and tells you that we have no time to write the code during the class?

The one who shows you a shitty presentation with the same code he just sent you, just cut into 72 slides and at every slide tells something like this is pretty self explanatory, x just does y and if you ask a question he gives you that deep stare, like if you really mean it seriously to waste his time, since he really really wants to go to his office sooner so he can scratch his balls?

That type of professor who tells you that as a student of CS degree you are required to put some passion to your craft and study when you arrive at home and hes there just to give you guidelines, but apparently somehow forgotten that people usually need to sleep?

That same cunt who doesnt give a shit that you have 4 more projects to finish this week, doesnt push the deadline, nor give you advice, because you had opporturnity to ask the whole time?

But still that motherfucker, who gives you test questions that he took from mouth of Satan himself and then questions your answers like Where did you get that from?

Well fuck yall who do that shit, hope that you suffocate yourself while eating bread.

Why these douches doesnt understand, that even if we arent under the Working Laws, working more than 40 hours a week isnt the best way to keep us sane or motivated.

Once in corporate stuffy devland a major monopoly-in-their-field client was raging at our tiny company and trying to scrutinize everything we did for whatever reason

The client's head huncho, some department head below the execs or something, insisted he have a code review meeting with the lead developer, which was me, and scrutinize my code in a 2 hour impromptu meeting one random Tuesday. Up until this point I was not allowed to even be introduced to the client so I'm a little ticked my company is throwing me under the bus like this.

So I get into this call, share my screen, guy is raging and asking questions left and right about every line I had written, firing, fuming, shouting... But it's clear he doesn't know how code works. So then I start teaching him how variable assignments work and function calls... He got so bored he left the meeting in 30 minutes and it was never spoken of again lmao

I've been teaching the new interns. Some are progressing really nicely and understanding the caveats and concepts of the frameworks, but others are a big pain in the kernel

I sent them some code outlining what they would do, filled with `// TODO`'s. Every day I would ask them if they had any questions and they just said they were having some progress. At the end of the week, they say "the code that you sent me doesn't work. I ran it and it didn't do what you said it would do." Well that was your job! My bad for having high expectations I guess

to the guys saying "oop is dumb" / "i don't need oop" / "i've never worked with oop"...

i have some questions:
- which language are you working with
- which problems are you solving
- how big is your code base
- how do you maintain readability of your code?

don't get me wrong, i don't believe that oop is always the answer. i'm just curious which fields these statements are coming from. if they all come from a low level (assembler, C, ..) or functional languages or "scripty" languages (python, JS), or if there are also people working with languages like C++ where oop is pretty much established. and if the latter, i'm curious how people design their code and what problems they solve... tell me your story :D

So apparently hiring these days is all about 1/3 learning random questions and answers 1/3 remembering algorithms from code execution portals 1/3 luck. Well fuck my life, it’s worse then 5 years ago when I last switched jobs.
So how was it 5 years ago you ask ?
I send my cv with exposed java interviewed for javascript and hired for python. At least then it was 50/50 luck.

Why so many recent questions about which code editor to use?

P.S. Nice to see vscode getting some recognition.

I really don't know how to please StackOverflow people. I did my due diligence on a bit of code but, like we all do, I got stuck and needed a bit of advice. I posted clearly and concisely and still my question got downvoted twice. What do they want? For me to post the question AND the answer? Only ask Ph.D.-type questions? Why am I never good enough for these people?!

First week at job as newly graduated from CompSci. And I feel like a fucking monkey trying to figure out how everything works, I have help from the main developer but it feels like I have to ask questions all the time and I can feel the judgement in his voice. Today I committed my first lines of code (phoneformatting) and he basically had to hold my hand the whole way through. I feel like shit atm, I really want to be good at this, I watch tutorials but when it comes down to it my mind just blanks out and I can't figure out how to even write a simple fucking method in php (which he did and my brain just shut down ). Please help me, how do I improve at remembering all these terminologies, I feel like if I keep it up like this they won't have me around for long.

First day went great. Got my laptop all set up. I still have no idea what I’m doing. Imposter syndrome really set in as of yesterday. Looking at the code base and seeing all of the code made me feel stupid. I understand I won’t know the whole code base.

It’s also my first developer job. I just feel stupid. I’m super eager to learn. But I feel like I’m going to ask a lot of stupid questions as well.

Idk how to feel. I guess a fraud would be the right answer? How can I get more comfortable at my new and first developer job?

I had the oppertunity to join a non profit organization to help them automate stuff instead of serving the army. One of their core applications got rewritten like a year ago from a terrible and very old Symfony stack to Laravel / React.

The guys who were in charge for the rewrite didn't really adapt the mindset of either MVC for Laravel nor the component idea behind React. There are a few controllers in the backend, but they sometimes have functions defined which would clearly belong in a model or service class. They rarely defined relationships on models, instead they're joining the tables together for the same effect. The frontend rendering mostly happens in for loops over the returned array from the API instead of breaking things down into little components. This ends in components which have sometimes over 1000 lines with super-nested logic in it.

But I did find my favorite piece of code today in of the controllers. Some many questions ...

So this is what a test looks like here in my school...
I really like my teacher but his test are... uhh... fucking awful.

I mean the code isn't even indented ffs! Like wtf?!? How should one be able to read this bullshit?
The questions are shitty too.
Also please add line numbers so it is easier to describe how things work in the code.
AND USE FUCKING A4 PAPERS FFS!!!

Thanks,
an experienced student

Dev sent out a code review request.
I take about an hour, ask questions, make suggestions, general feedback, etc.

Today I noticed none of my questions were answered, developer closed the review, and the code merged into the production branch.

So I email him, asking him why the review was closed and why none of my concerns were addressed before merging to production.

Dev: "No one responded or left feedback, so I thought it was OK to merge up."
Me: "I reviewed and left feedback within the hour you sent the request."
Dev: "Oh yea...you did. Sorry. The code is already in production, but if you still want to leave feedback, create a work item, and I'll take a look."

No you won't.

An example of the code...The dev added an async method to a test harness *console app*. Why? .. check in comment was "Improves performance and enhances the developer experience.."
NO IT DOESN'T!

OK..that's off my chest. No one is getting punched in the face today.

I just went to SO to browse questions and learn something or help someone...
And then...
THE FREAKING PRINTSCREEN OF IDE
INSTEAD OF COPYING THE CODE

And you know what's worse?
There was also a PHOTO of the output from the console.

I would have to say the first start-up I worked with had the worst recruiters. Albeit they were seniors of mine, and not full fledged professionals, but this was pretty ridiculous.

So at the interview(which I won by winning a hackathon in college), they asked me the standard questions about my current knowledge and what I hope to achieve in the company. When they asked me my tech questions, one program that they thought was tough, I solved in 2 minutes. I was interviewing with 3 other people whom hadn't gotten the answer. Naturally I doubt myself due to the lack of answers being produced. The recruiters themselves didnt understand my answer initially. So much so that they were convinced I was wrong(at this time the others were coming up with, and submitting their answers, which the recruiters naturally expected from us). So to give me the benefit of the doubt, they whip out a laptop to run my code, and guess what? It worked, and had NOTICABLY lesser computation speed.

Needless to say I got the job, but the look on my recruiters' faces after exclaiming I was wrong, then they themselves being proven wrong? Priceless. xD

Whenever I have to ask about how certain code of someone else works, I feel bad. I feel like I should be able to figure it out on my own.
On the other hand, if people ask me to implement something within their code, that I am not familiar with, I kinda expect more info? Like if you don't have any tutorials or documentation on your tool, be prepared to answer some stupid questions about how to set it up and whatnot. How else am I gonna know how to start with? Having to read the entire source code is a massive waste of time, no?

tl;dr: if you don't provide documentation or tutorials, be ready to answer stupid questions.

90% of beginner questions are so damn annoying. I get it, some people are new and still learning but for the love of God, I just want to tell these kids to shut the fuck up, sit their ass down and WRITE SOME DAMN CODE, instead of bitching and moaning about what they best language is or how to magically read a tutorial and become a ninja in a day.

Fuck.

You see that, over there?

That massive, 10-ton bag of dicks sitting there in the corner?

Secure Code Warrior can eat that ENTIRE FUCKING THING!

SO many flaws in their tests... SO much HIGHLY questionable content... utterly RIDICULOUS bullshit code with no comments and no context... asking me fucking Angular questions when I'm doing an Express test... two answers that are IDENTICAL... and a busted-ass site on top of it all.

I hate this motherfucking bullshit SO much, and at this moment I hate my employer even more for forcing me to deal with it.

But, hey, I hope you enjoy no work getting done today since you seem to prefer I do this instead, so I guess I'll just scare my dog some more as I yell about this bullshit.

Fuck you Secure Code Warrior, fuck you very, VERY much.

interview from the other side. A month ago I was looking for frontend dev for team I lead.
Now I believe that it was a nightmare for one guy, whos bio was full of js, angular and a little of php. Thought that he will be the man we were looking for.
Nope. I've started with classic (I suppouse) questions, like call and apply difference. Guy couldn't even manage to say a word. Went to bubbling, nothing. Ok sth easier, hoisting... Maybe at least you're minifying your code? donno what is. Ok so what you actually did from js? "I know jQuery, did something in this, and did full angular app to build forms, store and send them", but after question what Factory is he covered his face in hands, went still for about three minutes and probably would start to cry but we stopped this. I feel sorry for this guy, but he applied for senior frontend position.

I've been asked to join a recruitment process to popular airline company. The same day I received email with instructions:
"[...] This is a short test comprised of 18 multiple choice questions. [...]

The total time for the test is max 16-minutes."

Yeah, I tried to open test on the phone. Fortunately, website prevented me from doing this. I had like 14 closed questions (not even multiple choice), the rest (at least 5 as I remember) was open questions including implementing whole app in React and refactoring some trivial code example. "Max 16 minutes" was 3 hours. I did everything except application because I wanted to distract my thoughts anyway because I had to say goodbye to my pet that day.

A week later they sent me an email that unfortunately "I don't meet their technical expectations" so I emailed them back that the test didn't meet my expectations as it was completely different from what I've been told and I did much more than I should anyway.

I just hope they are better prepared for recruitment processes for captains than programmers.

"This question is unlikely to help any future visitors"

For all the people that answer anyway or answer before this happens, thank you.

To the assholes who do this at SO: I can't tell you how many specific problems I've had where a question that did help me had this.

You all suck. Go fuck yourself off a cliff. The entire site is built on the backs of people who get shat on by a small elitist community that likely couldn't code themselves out of a box.

Again, to those who still answer... thank you. To those who still ask questions in spite of the abuse... thank you.

At a startup where the software was built haphazardly because the developer thought he'll lifelong be the sole maintainer. The dude antagonized me at every turn and refused to help with familiarising with his code. He eventually left majority of the work for me, and dedication to work continued to dwindle until he threw in the towel

After his departure, we surprisingly grew fond of each other, discussing code concepts at length. He was in the habit of refusing to read any of the articles I sent him, or answer open ended questions citing the claim that they require thinking and he was busy. I didn't take any of this to heart

But it accumulated and I deleted his number. I didn't bear him any ill wishes but it wasn't respectful to myself for him to remain in my space. Some day, I was looking for a point raised during our conversations and went rummaging through our chats. Going down memory lane opened scars I'd long forgotten. I was embarrassed to see the way I forgot all about it. I should never have had anything to do with someone like that

He contacted me for a favour just less than a year after I deleted his contact. I didn't even think of declining. But this evening, I randomly remembered how he saw a defect in my code, promised me that the code will fail in production and resisted all pleas to point out what it was. I don't know if I hate him for his dastardly acts. What I feel deepest is sadness/bitterness that I got to experience all that

Read the fucking code! Stop asking questions that could be answered if you spent 5 minutes reading the code.

Disclaimer: I hold no grudges or prejudices toward [CENSORED] company. I love the concept of the business model and the perks they pay their employees. Unfortunately, the company is very petty, and negligence is the core of the management. I got into an interview for the position, of Senior Software Engineer, and the interview wouldn't take place if wasn't for me to follow up with the person in charge countless times a day. The Vice President of Engineering was the most confused person ever encountered. Instead of asking challenging questions that plausibly could explain and portray how well I can manage a team, the methodology of working with various technology, and my problem-solving skills. They asked me questions that possibly indicated they don't even know what they need or questions that can easily get from a Google Search. I was given 40 hours to build a demo application whereby I had to send them a copy of the source code and the binary file. The person who contacted me don't even bother with what I told her that it is not a good practice to place the binary in cloud storage (Google Drive, OneDrive, etc) and I request extra time to complete the demo application. Since I got the requirement to hand them the repository of the codebase, it is common practice to place the binary in the release section in the Git Platform (Jire, Azure DevOps, Github, Gitlab, etc). Which he surprisingly doesn't know what that is. There's the API key I place locally in .env hidden from the codebase (it's not good practice to place credentials in the codebase), I got a request that not only subscript to an API is necessary but I have to place them in the codebase. I succeed to pass the source code on time with the quality of 40 hours, I told him that I could have done it better, clearer and cleaner if I was given more grace of time. (Because they are not the only company asking me to write a demo application prior to the assessment. Extra grace was I needed)

So long story short, I asked him how is it working in a [CENSORED] company during my turn to ask questions. I got told that the "environment is friendly, diverse". But with utmost curiosity, I contacted several former employees (Software Engineer) on LinkedIn, and I got told that the company has high turnover, despises diversity the nepotism is intense. Most of the favours are done based on how well you create an illusion of you working for them and being close to the upper management. I request shreds of evidence from those former employees to substantiate what they told me. Seeing the pieces of evidence of how they manage the projects, their method of communication, and how biased the upper management actually is led me to withdraw from continuing my application. Honestly, I wouldn't want to work for a company where the majority can't communicate.

Curious interview process for a job I was denied for. I was told to create an app for a "case study" I was given a week it was supposed to be a single activity sports app written in MVVM with a specific API. I turned in a single activity, 3 fragment application, that made queries and displayed results from that specific API as well as told the weather and in quirky quotes told you whether or not it was a good idea to go tailgating. When I got to the interview after turning it in a day early they said they loved the application, hounded me on code (all questions in which I answered) and they told me that I would get word on next steps within the next few days. Obviously I didn't get that job as earlier stated however, does this not seem weird?

I don't know why they made so many algorithms, data structures and big O questions during interview, when all they wanted me to do was to maintain some legacy, tight coupled, spaghetti code with no architecture, documentation, tests nor any kind of engineering behind :/

The saddest and funniest side of our industry is (atleast in India): someone works hard and makes it to the best colleges, do great projects on AI, ML; get a good score on Leetcode, codechef; gets a job in FAANG-like companies...

Changes colors in CSS and texts in HTML.

And, why is there so much emphasis on Data Structures and Algorithms? I mean, a little bit is fine, but why get obsessed with it when you never write algorithms in production code?

Now, don't tell me that, we use libraries and we should know what we are doing, no, we don't use algorithms even in libraries.

Now, before you tell me that MySQL uses B-tree for maintaining indexes, you really don't need to solve tricky questions to be able to understand how a B-tree works.

It's just absurd.

I know how to little bit on how design scalable systems.
I know how to write good code that is both modular and extensible.
I know how to mentor interns and turn them into employees.
I know how to mentor junior engineers (freshers) and help them get started.
Heck I can even invert a binary tree.

But some FAANG company would reject me because I cannot solve a very tricky dynamic programming question.

Apparently my learning style is more rote memorization than learn-by-doing and I've been trying to learn by doing for years as a hobbyist.

It took a fucking *national quarantine* to get me to try something different and I'm blown away.

What would have taken me many months to learn I've all but grasped in detail in a matter of 20 hours of study over the course of a week.

Fuck you javascript. I WIN THIS ROUND. No more looking at the documentation for stupid shit like how to write a regex, or why everything is wrapped in fucking parenthesis (IIFE), or why
I keep getting a uncaught reference exception.

The important thing to realize about learning is NEVER be obstinate about it. Try many things, and don't get stuck in one way of learning unless you know thats what works for you.

This is why having study partners and mentors are important.

I think experience/practice and rote learning work in tandem. Rote learning lets you skip the much longer step of grasping the fundamentals, bootstrapping the process of learning the abstractions that are composed of those fundamentals.

I'm still adding cards to my anki flash card deck, but if anyone wants it I'm willing to share. It's mostly just 1. practice questions, 2. detail questions (what are the types? What does this regex do?, etc), 3. implication questions (heres this bit of code. It's XYZ, why did it fail? Correct it.), combining core details to memorize, and the application of the facts learned.

It helped me to learn and I'm apparently retarded, so if you're new to programming and want to learn JS, it can probably help you too. Unless you're more of a tard than me lol.

I made a web app where I can build any kind of form, with sections, validations, multiple type of inputs (even coordinates or polygons, photos, etc.) while allowing to see a preview of how that would look in a mobile app. That preview is because when you're done building the form and saved it to the DB, then in a mobile app (which I made as well) you can choose that form and use it.

Everything is beautiful, but after 3 sections with 25 questions each, everything becomes really slow because of the insane amount of actions that redux-form fires on every character type 😢

Today I made a public demonstration, and despite my code is very clean and well made, I think, that slowness made me look like a shitty developer, even thought I know what I made is like a 1000 times better than what I was asked to develop.