This week, I talked with Dan Russell, a search anthropologist at Google, about the time he spends with random people studying how they search for stuff. One statistic blew my mind. 90 percent of people in their studies don't know how to use CTRL/Command + F to find a word in a document or web page! I probably use that trick 20 times per day and yet the vast majority of people don't use it at all."90 percent of the US Internet population does not know that. This is on a sample size of thousands," Russell said. "I do these field studies and I can't tell you how many hours I've sat in somebo...

How do you answer the question, “what do I need to learn to be a good programmer?” I have written posts trying to answer that question, typically focusing on the languages that you should learn or the algorithms and other techniques you need to know. What about the rest of a programmer’s life? This is a less serious look at the life of a programmer. So, what does a programmer really need to know?Caffeine â€“ You need to find your preferred caffeine delivery system. Mine is black coffee, early and often. Others may prefer diet soda throughout the day. There are alwa...

I got an email request to publish this article a few days ago.I was actually on the verge of moving the email to the trash when I noticed the first name of the author: Rand.For those of you not familiar with the Wheel of Time series, the main character’s name is Rand.I admit that it’s an embarrassing weak reason to respond to a strange email, but reading some 10,000 pages of a fantasy series obviously messes with your mind.Then again, it’s probably no stranger than Rand Mendoza wanting to publish his article on this blog to begin with.Anyways, enjoy…**...

That’s the challenge.Sit down with someone you’ve never met and try to work out if they are a coder or a clown.I don’t mean to insult anyone, of course, and I’m the first to acknowledge the years of training and effort that goes into being a professional clown.But some coders, oh boy.Like the time I interviewed a recent graduate. I’ll call her Ada. Full of sympathy for the novice programmer I started with a gentle warm-up, a soft-ball question to break the ice.I asked Ada to write some code, on paper, that would print the word “hello” ten times. A...

I’ve taken and marked a lot of programming tests in the past. I love doing them as it’s always good to see what challenges different programmers have come up with when designing them. Unfortunately, however, most of them aren’t very good. Below is a list of general ideas to help increase the quality of programmer tests.1. Keep it relevantToo many of the tests have questions on content that simply isn’t relevant to the job. The whole idea behind a programming test is making sure the candidate is competent enough to fulfill the role. It shouldn’t be asking ques...

If someone asks you to recommend a good programmer, who comes to mind? Do you consider yourself a good programmer? What criteria do you use to judge?In thinking about this, I realized that there are different ways that a programmer can be good. So I present to you The Four Kinds of Good Programmers. And in celebration of Whyday, I include quirky Why-styled illustrations* for your viewing pleasure!The PhilosopherThe PhilosopherThe philosopher loves to write well-defined, well-structured, beautiful code. That the program will be implemented is assumed; the elegance, robustness, and flexibil...

We want to foster a creative environment. We love it when employees hack onside projects. It gets people excited. Excitement is contagious, andspreads easily from one project to another. Even if we’ll never make money onthat side project, the excitement generated from it can bleed into things thatwill make us money.AlcoholIt’s no secret that there’s more than a few people at GitHub who like to drink.I mean, we have four beers on-tap at the office in our kegerator.But alcohol is more important than just intoxication.We meet people. Through our sponsored drinkups, we meet a ...

This is — by far — my favorite aspect of working at GitHub. Everything isasynchronous.ChatGitHub didn’t have an office for the first two years. Chat rooms (in our case,Campfire) is where things got done. Today we’ve moved into oursecond office, and Campfire is still where we get things done. There’s areason for that: chat is asynchronous.Asynchronous communication means I can take a step out for lunch and catch upon transcripts when I get back. Asynchronous communication means I can ask mycoworker a question in-chat and not worry about bothering her since she...