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  What I learned interviewing with Google

Over the last few weeks I’ve been interviewing with Google for a job doing primarily JavaScript development. I didn’t end up getting the job but I thought I would share the process of interviewing for Google as it was both very exciting and a humbling experience. I can’t reveal everything as I’m under a few NDAs. I’m not going to mention the products or teams that I was interviewing for but you may be able to guess. For those that don’t know me, I...

   Google,Experience,Interview,Algorithm     2012-02-10 06:19:17

  Stop programming

You probably program too much. Just when you've really gotten into your work, when your brain is entirely wrapped around your code, when your hands, eyes, and thoughts are working in harmony, stop. Look up. Think about when you're going to finish for the day. Look forward to shutting off your computer. Get outside a little. ...

   Programming,Tips     2011-06-30 02:50:14

  Java Doesn't Need to Be So Bad

I do a lot of Java coding and I enjoy it. I admit that there is a lot of typing, often a lot of boilerplate and getting even simple tasks done can involve too much work. Most of the tools that try to fix these problems trade one moment saved for another lost. Maven's XML based configuration file is a good example: Thank you for making my project easier to manage and I won't forget that you made me edit XML to do so. These are the things that you live with, these are the things you trade for ...

   Java,Coding,Enterprise application,Tedious     2011-12-09 07:50:20

  How NOT to teach a computer language

For the past year or so my wife has been taking online classes to get a computer science degree. For most of her classes she’s done great, she’s been flying through HTML and SQL, even up to the point where she can handle multilevel joins and optimizing through indexes. That was until she hit her vb.net class. I had no idea why she was having problems with a language has easy as vb.net so I started helping her out and find out why she was having so many problems. I’ve also ad...

   Programming,Teach,Book,Grade,Method,Computer     2011-11-06 14:52:13

  The Mature Programmer

1. The Mature Programmer The mature programmer manages their own time and productivity well. The MP knows that maintenance is as much work as the initial writing and code always takes longer than you think. The MP knows that any changes to code can introduce bugs, no matter how seemingly trivial. The MP knows that premature optimization is foolish and dangerous. The MP knows that sexy coding like writing big complex systems from scratch is rarely the best way to go. The MP does not get...

   Mature programmer,MP,Feature,Coding standard,Efficiency     2011-12-05 13:12:00

  Redesigning the Technical Hiring Process

Since my last post on technical interviews, I’ve been fairly involved in hiring at Pulse as we grew our team from 6 people when I joined last November to 14 full-timers. In my previous post, I suggested that technical interviews, in the conventional sense, are not especially effective (by technical interviews, I mean the traditional 45 minute coding-at-a-whiteboard and algorithm puzzlers interviews). Those do a great job of telling you how well a candidate is at acing those types o...

   Career,Recruitment,Process,Developer,Ski     2011-09-14 12:01:37

  Why hasn't Facebook migrated away from PHP?

The reason Facebook hasn't migrated away from PHP is because it has incumbent inertia (it's what's there) and Facebook's engineers have managed to work around many of its flaws through a combination of patches at all levels of the stack and excellent internal discipline via code convention and style - the worst attributes of the language are avoided and coding style is rigidly enforced through a fairly tight culture of code review (failing to adhere to the style and "going cowboy" by writ...

   Facebook,PHP,Migration,Bad feature,Codebase     2012-02-24 05:14:23

  A couple of tips for beginning programmers

Whether it is football, quantum physics, a new foreign language or programming, the beginnings are problematic. What is more, no amount of advice can teach you as much as your own experience. Nevertheless, the following tips will help you avoid some mistakes, save your time and develop good programmer habits from the very beginning.Practise logical thinkingAlthough some may laugh at the stereotype of a programmer being a Maths genius, there is no use denying that learning Maths and Logics prepar...

   Programming,Tips,Beginner     2014-06-17 07:47:31

  Why 0.1+0.2 != 0.3

In programming languages such as JavaScript, c/c++, Java and Matlab, you will find that you will get unexpected result when doing float point calculation. For example, when calculating 0.1 + 0.1, you will not get 0.3: > 0.1 + 0.2 == 0.3 false > 0.1 + 0.2 0.30000000000000004 Don't be surprised of this result, this is the end result of IEEE 754 standard, float point number cannot be accurately represented according to IEEE 754 because: No enough memory is allocated for representing the num...

   float point,comparison,JavaScript     2014-11-19 05:32:46

  10 habits of 10x developers

Last week, I discovered The Rise of Developeronomics via Brad Feld. As long as I’ve lived, it has always been a great time to be a software developer. The economics keep getting better for us. My favorite quote: The one absolutely solid place to store your capital today — if you know how to do it –  is in software developers’ wallets. If the world survives looming financial apocalypse dangers at all, this is the one investment that will weather the storms. ...

   Developer,Efficiency,Advice,Rest,Focus     2011-12-26 02:54:06

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