Trent's projects

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 23 Jan 2018 18:24:30 +0000
"Carruth, Rusty" <Rusty.Carruth at smartm.com> wrote:


> > 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

LOL, well, you needed to open the input file and create the output file
at the beginning, and close both files at the end, but yeah, that's
it. .

> 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! :-)

I chose 1/2 hour as an amount of time in which any fool could figure
out how to write the program. I was more concerned with ability to
think things through than quickness, so I gave them a ridiculously long
time limit. Little did I know :-)

The first 2 or 3 who failed to get it done in 30 minutes, I figured,
well, they're stupid fakers. But as more and more results confirmed the
first ones, I had to change my mind on the capabilities of people who
would apply for an entry level programming position. As I remember, the
quickest solution was 20 minutes, by a UCLA grad who *wasn't* "run of
the mill", I offered her the job almost instantly, but she rejected the
minute salary I offered.

SteveT

Steve Litt
January 2018 featured book: Troubleshooting: Why Bother?
http://www.troubleshooters.com/twb