I am begging companies to test out their interview questions, especially the coding tests, on their own senior people as calibration, before using them as a gauge for hiring new folks.
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I am begging companies to test out their interview questions, especially the coding tests, on their own senior people as calibration, before using them as a gauge for hiring new folks. An awful lot of them are functionally just random-number generators.
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I am begging companies to test out their interview questions, especially the coding tests, on their own senior people as calibration, before using them as a gauge for hiring new folks. An awful lot of them are functionally just random-number generators.
Like - I get the "we're just testing basic skills" to spot people who are essentially lying. Fine, so make the test literally trivial. Read some numbers, find their mean, done.
Or there's the "we want something to start a conversation". OK, so don't have an actual answer (or at least not one that is sane). Ask them to make a program that plays checkers, write it in an hour, and be clear that there isn't going to be a "right answer" in just an hour.
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Like - I get the "we're just testing basic skills" to spot people who are essentially lying. Fine, so make the test literally trivial. Read some numbers, find their mean, done.
Or there's the "we want something to start a conversation". OK, so don't have an actual answer (or at least not one that is sane). Ask them to make a program that plays checkers, write it in an hour, and be clear that there isn't going to be a "right answer" in just an hour.
@TomF "using whatever language/compiler/framework you are most comfortable with, implement Tetris/space invaders/pac man."
If you want coders, that is. -
@TomF "using whatever language/compiler/framework you are most comfortable with, implement Tetris/space invaders/pac man."
If you want coders, that is.@StompyRobot The problem is that's at least a week of work. Unreasonable request.
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@StompyRobot The problem is that's at least a week of work. Unreasonable request.
@TomF @StompyRobot the one i did for massive back in da day was 'fix this pacman game' which mostly worked but had some more or less obvious issues. which bridges the gap a bit. might be a bit fun now that people can throw it into an llm and get a half fixed bunch of nonsense out :')
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I am begging companies to test out their interview questions, especially the coding tests, on their own senior people as calibration, before using them as a gauge for hiring new folks. An awful lot of them are functionally just random-number generators.
@TomF Wait you mean senior devs with 15 years of experience don't tend to be reminded in their daily stand-up of the big O complexity of every linked list operation or the exact terminology of [insert academic computer science term that programmers on the field never deal with]?
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@TomF Wait you mean senior devs with 15 years of experience don't tend to be reminded in their daily stand-up of the big O complexity of every linked list operation or the exact terminology of [insert academic computer science term that programmers on the field never deal with]?
@bubbline Heh. One of the verbal questions, they placed increasing constraints on me and were clearly shepherding me to something, and after a bit of confusion I realised - "Oh! You want me to implement a doubly linked list! No, I refuse."
I then explained why this was a terrible solution all round, and that there was a good reason I literally could not remember the last time I used a linked list in actual code.
To their credit they went "yeah, fair enough"
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@bubbline Heh. One of the verbal questions, they placed increasing constraints on me and were clearly shepherding me to something, and after a bit of confusion I realised - "Oh! You want me to implement a doubly linked list! No, I refuse."
I then explained why this was a terrible solution all round, and that there was a good reason I literally could not remember the last time I used a linked list in actual code.
To their credit they went "yeah, fair enough"
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Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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I hope it works out! 🤞🏼
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So, I booked a train trip from Seattle to Vancouver. I figure the all-Canadian leg of my trip will be less chaotic. I'll ride to Vancouver on Saturday and then fly to Montreal Saturday night.
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So, that doesn't cover my flight out, but my flight home might be affected. Even if my flight itself isn't cancelled, I'll be at an airport with thousands of people whose flights were cancelled. There will be delays in the network. If I do get cancelled, I'd be competing with thousands of other people to get on a flight, bus, or train home.
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Then, the Secretary of Transportation said that they were going to start shutting down 10% of air travel through us airports starting Friday.
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So, I am flying from Montreal to Seattle for #seagl2025. I leave on Nov 6 and return on Nov 8. I fly from Montreal to Vancouver to Seattle, and then back. All good.
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@evan You might need to thee an thenthift.
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Better 3D-Printed Bridges Are Possible, With the Right Settings
The header image above shows a completely unsupported 3D-printed bridge, believe it or not. You’re looking at the bottom of the print. [Make Wonderful Things] wondered whether unsightly unsupported bridges could be improved, and has been busy nailing down remarkably high-quality results by exhaustive testing of different settings.
It all started when they thought that unsupported bridges looked a lot as though they were made from ropes stretched between two points. Unlike normal layers, these stretched extrusions didn’t adhere to their neighbors. They are too far apart from one another, and there’s no “squish” to them. But could this be overcome?
His experiments centered mainly around bridge printing speed, temperature, and bridge flow. That last setting affects how much the extrusion from the hot end is adjusted when printing a bridge. He accidentally increased it past 1.0 and thought the results were interesting enough to follow up on; it seemed that a higher flow rate when printing a bridge gave the nudge that was needed to get better inter-line adhesion. What followed was a lot of testing, finally settling on something that provided markedly better results than the stock slicer settings. Markedly better on his test pieces, anyway.
BF = Bridge flow, BS = Bridge printing speed (in mm/sec)
The best results seem to come from tweaking the Bridge Flow rate high enough that extrusions attach to their neighbors, printing slowly (he used 10 mm/sec), and ensuring the bridged area is as consistent as possible. There are still open questions, like some residual sagging at corners he hasn’t been able to eliminate, but the results otherwise look great. And it doesn’t even require laying one’s printer on its side!All the latest is on the project page where you can download his test models, so if you’re of a mind to give it a try be sure to check it out and share your results. Watch a short video demonstrating everything, embedded just under the page break.
Thanks to [Hari] for the tip!
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But I did not toot the deputy
