Trent's projects

[Carruth, Rusty]

Wow!  That's all I have to say.  Well, ok, no I'll say a bit more.



-----Original Message-----
From: PLUG-discuss [mailto:plug-discuss-bounces at lists.phxlinux.org] On Behalf Of Steve Litt

Snip/chop/mangle/spindle/fold/mutilate/...

> I'd like to return to the concept of "run of the mill construction
> workers", specifically, the "run of the mill" part. Let's discuss "run
> of the mill" Comp-Sci grads, because as a rule they're not like the
> people on this list.

You're probably right there...

> Once I advertised a position as my assistant programming a substantial
> part of a medical management package. Entry level: I'd teach em. We got
> several Comp-Sci grads from UCLA, and also several students and recent
> Associate Degree folks from Santa Monica Community College. I gave them
> all the exact same test: Pseudo-code a program to take an input file,
> capitalize all characters, and output to an output file. You have 1/2
> hour.

They needed half an hour????  Really???  Goodness!!!!  (pick my mouth up off the floor!)

Read a line. 
For each character in line 
   if char is lowercase make uppercase; 
   print char;
print ""
repeat until eof

15 seconds - ok, maybe 30 since I went back and reformatted it to be prettier.  Take 30 seconds to a minute, maybe 2, if you want something closer to a real programming language (like, an actual test - of course, I'd probably just use 'toupper' on every character and be done with it!)

Ok, yes, I've been doing software for, what, 40 years?  But, half an hour????  AAHHHH (runs screaming from building! :-)

After writing the following, even with the elapsed time, I'm STILL shocked about someone needing half an hour.  Wow.

> About 1/2 of the Santa Monica College people substantially completed
> the test within a half hour. Exactly one UCLA comp-sci grad
> substantially completed the test. Most of the UCLA grads bogged down
> after 2 or 3 lines of pseudocode.

> In the interviews, the UCLA people glibly buzzworded, enumerated the
> languages they knew, and boasted of writing compilers. But when asked
> to deliver, they couldn't produce a bare bones proof of concept of the
> algorithm basic to most back end processing. These were run of the mill
> comp-sci grads.

I probably shouldn't mention it, but I know of a person who admitted to me that he.. um.. PADS his resume.  He knows how to spell something, so he's close enough to knowing it.  (OK, that's not exactly what he said or how he implemented it, but close enough).  Good thing for him I didn't know that before he got hired...

For the record, NO, most people don't pad their resume.  OR, if they do, you don't want them working for/with you.

(As an aside - don't do that.  Once a person learns that your resume cannot be trusted, they will let hiring managers know that your resume isn't trustworthy - and in fact most of the people who know you know that and will NOT be an asset to you when you try to get a job where they work.  Saw that happen...)

> Let's leave run of the mill people out of the discussion. Folks who
> love to code self-select themselves out of the run of the mill category.

This is something I'm realizing as I get older.  The folks that I thought were 'normal' were actually probably in the top 10% (or better).  And they were almost all in the 'self-select' category...  (to be honest,  I can't think of a single 'normal' person who belongs in the 'exceptional' group who WASN'T in the self-select group...)