I write a lot of PHP for part of my job.
The beauty of PHP is that for any given task, there are always multiple ways to do it, all of which are wrong.
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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"Introductions and a bit of smalltalk" - I would shit myself if an interviewer started asking about smalltalk... /s
The fuck kind of programming language is "smalltalk"?
It was an old object oriented language before Java. I think Apple made a lot of use of it?
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This actually gives me some confidence in my programming skill level.
I was thinking the same thing. I mean, I just did a coding test for a potential job, and I know I did at least as good as, and likely better than this.
edit: just to prove to myself, I went ahead and wrote the program without looking things up. I'm self-taught so I feel pretty proud. It took about 25 mins, and it works!
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I used to work at a company that used XSLT. They know that it's an obscure language that probably none of the potential candidates have ever worked with. But it's easy enough to learn the basics in an hour or two.
So the entry test was to strip some tags from an XML file. You had a day or two (maybe more) to do it. My solution wasn't ideal, I didn't use several of the shortcuts available in the language. But at least it did what it was supposed to.
A few weeks after I had started working there my boss came up to me, visibly frustrated and asked me whether the test was too hard. Thinking back on my problems I replied that maybe having the desired output ready so that you could test your own solution against it might be nice. But my boss's problem was that none of the last 5 candidates could even send in a solution that would run.
You had so much time, and running an XSLT script is really easy and takes no time at all. And for some inane reason these people couldn't even manage to test their code and still decided to send it in.
And I thought I was an idiot when I didn't know if it was spelled grey or gray in CSS during the in-person interview.
It is very good test for the ability to research, I think. The amount of people who painstakingly went through some video tutorial on PHP and are now developers is insane. I'm sure there's place in the market for them (writing Wordpress themes/plugins, for example), but it's hard to find a programmer with ability to think these days. Not because people are more stupid, but because every other person is a programmer now.
You had a day or two [...] none of the last 5 candidates could even send in a solution that would run.
As harsh as this sounds, this test was doing its job. Assuming you're not hiring junior candidates, that is.
One day is enough to research XSLT enough to get the gist, and two is enough for a polished solution. And since we're just stripping tags, we're really just selecting for all the inner text, which is weird but not hard to do with the right selector expression. The task also selects for people that understand XML processing as programmatically manipulating a DOM, which is crucial to wrapping your head around more advanced tasks.
grey and gray are both in CSS. If you've worked with CSS long enough there's a chance you've seen both. :)
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Only PHP programmers post something like this as an image! 😘
You can tell this is fake because the code interview actually tests basic knowledge instead of giving you 13 minutes to create a templated polymorphic class which accepts arbitrary flatbuffer arguments and implements factory pattern constructors written in Haskell, with the end goal of recursively sorting nanoparticles by bond strength. Intro level position, $8/hr, must supply your own MacBook.
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Oh geez, I'm one of those people who can't code on paper. I was applying for something ages ago and I went in for a programming test and they handed me a paper test and my mind completely shut down. Put me in front a computer and I have no issues at all... It was embarrassing.
I would just write down the steps I would take, just some psudocode. It doesn't have to work, it just has to make sense in the style of the language you're talking about.
import random library
import any GUI/display libraries required for the outcome desired
build array of integers [1..52] (or 0..51 if you're being fancy)
for loop 1..1000
select random number A 1..52 (or 0..51 if you used that above)
select random number B 1..52 (or 0..51 if you used that above)
swap elements in the array A and B
pop first two elements from array
decode at display time what the two numbers represent in terms of playing cards
If the test requires more than that, then they're crazy. The syntax doesn't matter, just that you can logic yourself through the problem.
You can use the IDE, google, or whatever to fill in the specifics. If you wanted me to do that in literally any programming language, once the psudocode is done, you just spend an hour or so looking up the details.
If you wanted me to do that in literally any programming language, once the psudocode is done, you just spend an hour or so looking up the details.
In some cases, you can even use an AI chatbot as a "pseudocode compiler". Just tell it to translate your pseudocode to an actual language. I've done it for shell scripts a couple of times, works surprisingly well. Not that I would do this at a job interview haha.
Even the odd numbers stuff? I think interviewers account for nerves and being outside an IDE. You might draw a blank but would you be would be randomly adding things like these did?
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for some reason I still needed to know programming on paper so much so that at the university, in class prgramming we had to do the exam on paper. every time. no matter if it was Java or C++...
I strangely enjoyed it, but it still was kinda weird.
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These are the "developers" that will be replaced by AI lol
Want to print out all odd numbers from 1 to 100? Easy:
for(_=[];_<+!![]+""+[]*[]+[]*[];_++)(_%+(!![]+!![])?console.log(_):[]);
Actually, I prefer this one:
for(_=[];_<+!![]+""+[]*[]+[]*[];_++%+(!![]+!![])?[]:console.log(_));
Or this one without the "undefined" when run in a browser console:
for(_=[];_<+!![]+""+[]*[]+[]*[]-!![]-!![];_++%+(!![]+!![])?[]:console.log(_));_+!![]
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And that's why we're moving away from coding games where I work. Bad people try to cheat, good people can panic and shit the bed.
When I do interviews, I'm more interested in the candidate's relevant experience, what kind of issues they faced, how they were solved, if they think they could have done things differently, and how they think. Code itself is irrelevant unless I can review a sprint's worth of PRs.
When I ask more technical questions, I never ask for code but for an explanation on how they would tackle the problem. For example, I often ask about finding a simple solution to get all data relevant to a certain date in two, simple, historized tables. If you know window functions, it's trivial. If you don't, your solution will be slow and dirty and painful. But as most devs don't know about window functions anyway, it lets me see how they approach the issue and if they understand what parts should have a trivial solution to make it simple.
This is why I prefer live interviews. I tell them they can use whatever tools they want, search for anything they want, there are no restrictions. All I ask is that they share their entire screen (if not in person) and try to "think out loud" as much as possible. I then time-box each step (usually 15m ea in a 1-hour interview).
I am most interested in HOW they solve the challenges I set out for them. Whether they complete it or not is usually irrelevant.
Edit: Lately, though - I warn against AI. I don't ban it, but every person that has tried to use AI in an interview has gone down in flames. AI simply cannot be trusted... and if you haven't learned that lesson, and you can't even tell when it's giving you bad information... yikes.
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great and hilarious post, but isn't this programming_horror instead of a linuxmemes
I hope these aren't real. I, and most people here, could probably write these codes top to bottom on paper without an eraser or strikethrough parts because we have it fully solved before the interviewer finished the sentence.
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I once knew a "developer" with 20 years of "experience" who could not write a foreach loop by hand
Some people are really good at bullshitting their way through life
I jump between languages so much I can never remember the structure.
for item in items? Or item of items or items as item?
Best to just have the IDE auto complete it.
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This makes me feel bad for the candidates but gave me the confidence boost I need right now
Still in university, never did an interview. Is that seriously the avarage difficulty of interview questions?
This is on the easier end of the scale to be sure, but as someone who's interviewed candidates with similar questions, it eliminates a surprising number of people...
My theory is that modern coding bootcamps stuff their students full of buzzwords instead of letting them learn the basics
I find the experience of the applicants to be hilarious lies.
Which shouldn't be surprising. The company I was interviewing at only feed me the top ~1% of CVs to interview... Of course half of them were stuffed with bullshit
Yeah, this is the problem. Someone who has legitimately built a basic application or website from scratch may know everything you need, but HR will filter it out.
They don't really understand what they are looking for, so someone who says they are an AI Researcher with 8 years of experience in the language "Zendaya" and work experience at five moon rocket startups will be at the top of the pile.
Companies need to beef up their training programs so they can literally take in whoever and teach them what they need to know. Forget trying to get the top people. Just take the first 20 who can make it through an interview without drooling on the floor. You will probably get at least 9 ok developers and 1 good one.
When I interview people, I don't care how they get an answer, I want to see that they can get to the answer, ideally the correct one, but it doesn't matter if it's wrong. I want them to show me their problem solving skills and that they understand their own solution.
If you can read existing code and understand complexities you are already better than 80% of these hires.
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"I am trying to test your programming skills, not your Google-search skills."
But they are the same thing.
I knew a dude who got a job for a programming language he never wrote. Not only that, the guy was hired to be the experienced / lead programmer to give guidance on how to use the language. In fact, I knew multiple people like this. Some were actual programmers and good at other programming languages, but some had decided it was time to switch from another field (geology, marketing, database engineer, ...).
It's still puzzling how they got their jobs.
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I feel fortunate that the image is fried and I can't read it.
If your client has an HD picture button (like Boost) you need to click it to actually receive the proper image
As someone who teachers high school freshmen computer science this pains me as most of my freshmen could do all of these.
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