David Cantrell wrote:
What, not even to automate away some of the incredibly tedious things
you have to do sometimes on your home machine? Nothing to work around
some other bastard's Hatefulness?
I guess that extending the scope to tiny piece of code would make it 3 out of 5
in my case. Doesn't make it worth to start an argument whether such kind of code
is any good when you want to judge someone's skills relevant for a practical job.
It's possible, but unlikely. And if the job is that good why are you
looking for a new one?
At this point we probably both realize that it can go on and on. I'll try to
compensate my urge to proceed despite that fact by lame attempts to make my
reply entertaining, but I don't guarantee anything.
So. You could leave that good job since
* You moved to another country
* A critical mass of bastards formed in that place, slaughtering the good
projects and rendering the place a graveyard
* The organization ran out of money (can happen to strong ones, especially when
they are huge and a critical mass of bastards paralizes too much of them, even
though some parts remain productive)
* You get to do great stuff at that place, but they think it means they don't
have to pay competitively, and you're in the mood for buying real estate
* You're done. Everything runs smoothely, no big interesting things are left,
the company is going to do nothing but ship copies of the feature-complete
product and answer tech support calls.
* The company ships a big hit and starts growing rapidly, but stupidly. Soon it
gets clogged up by people you'd rather not work with.
True, but I keep finding that all of the other things I'm interested in
can be helped out with a few lines of code, whether it be driving model
trains or going for a walk on the Downs.
The physical world has a lot to offer, and many of the interesting devices lack
digital components. Enumerating them would take copying the larger part of a
dictionary, so I'll pass.
For a project to succeed all it has to do is solve the problem that
prompted you to write it in the first place.
There are many programming languages solving the same problem of programming,
many operating systems solving the problem of operating a system, many web
browsers solving the problem of browsing the web, and many idiotic programs
solving the problem of wishing to look at an idiotic program for amusement
(dc.sed, etc.). Some of them succeeded, some didn't. Few people would agree that
the ones that largely failed did so because they largely failed to solve the
problem.
I even hate my own a little bit, but I hate not having software even more.
The thing is that some people have much more extrinsic motivation ("people need
this program", "I get payed for it") than intrinsic motivation ("this program is
so interesting", "nobody did this before"). This doesn't make them weak
professionals, since their extrinsic motivation can cause their intrinsic
motivation to ultimately reach a high level. But this won't happen if there's no
extrinsic motivation to start with.
And there is the heart of the issue. I suppose it's like automagically
rejecting people who don't have a piece of paper from a university. But
I bet that rejecting people who don't do any coding at all on their own
time is *far* more accurate.
I won't argue with that, even though personally I went straight for the piece of
paper but didn't complete any programming project outside of work. Your claim is
somewhat analogous to my assumption that the problem is mostly in false negative
cases, not the false positive. That is, you'll surely reject good candidates,
but accepting poor candidates is less likely.
I still dislike both methods of rejection, and I think they're ultimately based
on the same principle - people reject the ones who are less like them. If
someone studied in a university but never coded without getting payed, they'll
look for their kind, and vice versa.
