Moron

Post #200,531 by broomberg 3/25/05 5:32:16 PM Reply	Moron 3 things about the guy jumped up and bit me. #1 I learned Perl and Python by reading a lot of other people\ufffds code, and by writing lots of small programs (and a few bigger ones). When faced with a \ufffdhow do I make the language do\ufffd\ufffd problem, I\ufffdd fumble through a growing collection of scripts looking for that one place where I\ufffdd solved a particular problem before. Having a big collection of prior solutions is handy, but searching is problematic. Some patterns aren\ufffdt amenable to grep. He learned a language once, and then thought he could learn other languages by reading code, rather than a reference guide and doing tutorials. This means he will always write his 1st language in it, or be constantly confused by syntax and idioms he does not understand. Oh, and THEN he fumbles around and cut & pastes. Idiot. This is the worse kind of failure I hit when interviewing people for a coding position. And then, he applies the same idiotic pattern to OS install and setup. Don't bother to read the notes, don't bother to do any research, don't bother to see the MANY pointers to Selinux, just slap a CD in and fumble around. #2 And then, on his home page: \n[link\|http://www.davewsmith.com/\|http://www.davewsmith.com/]\nDave W. Smith\n\ndws @ davewsmith . com\n\nAgile Software Project Leader, Architect, and Catalyst\nOccassional Author\nCrafter of Fine Objects\nRecovering Stress Puppy \n There are not so many words on this page the the glaring typo does not just jump out at you! #3 Oh, and his standing header text on his blog is: \nDave W. Smith\nThis could all be a lot simpler.\n simpler The standard whine for people who get confused easily and blame the world around them. At that point, everyone is against them and making it more complex then it has to be, which in turn feeds their paranoia. You know this guy?
Post #200,533 by jake123 3/25/05 5:51:36 PM Reply	Let's see paranoid, can't handle complexity, confused by idioms he doesn't understand, pastes a sloppy second hand solution over a new problem without necessarily chacking for applicability, or even relevance to the problem... why it's George W. Bush! --\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton jake at consultron.ca \n [link\|http://consultron.ca\|http://consultron.ca] [link\|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca\|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] \n Kingston Ontario Canada [link\|news://news.consultron.ca\|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------
Post #200,534 by ben_tilly 3/25/05 5:58:04 PM Reply	Yes, I know him. You're complete offbase. [link\|http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node=dws\|http://www.perlmonks...index.pl?node=dws] I've [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=184380\|mentioned him] here before. He programs more than a couple of languages. Competently. His approach to learning languages apparently varies depending on the language. There is a reason that he describes having learned Perl and Python that way. I'd assume that he learned C, Java, Smalltalk or PDP-10 assembler using different strategies. (All of which he has been paid for doing.) The "snippets" approach that he mentions can be well or poorly. The idea when done well is very similar to the Perl Cookbook. For many kinds of jobs that occasional Perl programmers encounter this approach is effective, which is one reason that the Cookbook comes highly recommended. I'll point out the typo to him. Cheers, Ben I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
Post #200,576 by dws 3/26/05 3:50:12 AM Reply	Re: Moron One can learn the mechanics of a language by reading the reference materials. Becoming conversant requires going beyond the references and learning the idioms. That means finding competent programmers and reading their code, and building up a set of examplars so that you don't have to reinvent from first principles whenever you run into a problem that you've seen solved cleanly before. That works for me. Maybe it's different for you. But if you're reading that to mean a general preference for "copy/paste", then perhaps I didn't choose my words with sufficient care, or perhaps you are reading more into what I wrote than the evidence supports. Having a spelling posse works too, since mine isn't that good.
Post #200,592 by broomberg 3/26/05 10:32:48 AM Reply	Hey, that's not what your blog says! I agree with what you say here, and that you need both 1/2s. Reading code that other people wrote, especially with comments that OTHER people wrote in it, is the perfect way to learn. But ONLY after you have invested enough time with reference material and a bit of tutorial so what you read has a chance of being understood. I interview and tech phone screen a lot of people. I read your link on interviewing, and I certainly agree with that. I do a slightly simpler version my self, but it starts with some silly syntax questions so I get a baseline of where people are, and then I ask them to produce a very simple filter script. Just as key to the code itself is what types of questions they ask me during the process. Ben whipped it out in a single line, vs my 1/2 dozen or so. I have people who struggle for 20 minutes, come up with a couple of pages of crap, and it is obvious they learned (COBOL\|BASIC\|Pascal\|C\|C++\|random crap) long ago, and are now writing it in Perl. My interview doesn't hit that section until about 20-40 minutes depending on the flow, and then I have a few more minutes. Including prep / review email, a typical interview costs me about an 1.5 hours. I've probably been bitten by 100 people in the last 5 years who don't know crap, but managed to get past the headhunter and HR to my interview, which means I lost 150 hours on them. I want those 150 hours back!!! (whine, whine, whine)

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