Don't let Jeff Atwood see that.. he'll shit and go blind.

Funny thing, once I learned vi -- I loved it. That was once I figured out how to quit the goddamn thing (esc:q! or esc:q)... but for some reason whenever I SSH into a Linux box, I prefer vi over anything else.

That's a dangerous question to ask... much akin to "which do you prefer: vi or emacs?" -- many wars built upon flame have been made by this. When I was a Linux young-ling I asked "which is better, ext2, ext3, or reiserfs?" -- being ignorant of the differences. That did not end well for the IRC channel and I felt like an asshole.

I got no problem if someone wants to invest time fixing pronouns and shit. My problem becomes when I'm FORCED to care about that shit or suffer actual real consequences like getting my repo locked. My app, my rules, don't like it then suck my cock and fork that bitch.

Just let reality flow. Either it'll collapse on itself due to be a hate-filled community on a major race/gender or it won't. I'm betting on the former. It'll be hard to keep that community going when you're feeling attacked or too afraid to publish code. At which point it won't matter anymore, they'll collapse. Or they won't and it'll make waves in other communities. It really is that simple.

No need to get worked up about it. In about 2 or so years we'll know where the rubber meets the road. If they want everyone to play with a helmet, knee pads, and foam swords -- let them.

It's sad. I remember a point in time where doing stuff like this, even in professional environments, was considered funny and cute. Then PR came in and oh heaven forbid you have any fun and it even appears fun.

There was a point in time when you'd play doom deathmatch after work but because it appeared they were fucking off too much, that got shit canned. Net result? Less people worked overtime to get projects done on time because they hit burn out too fast. Congrats.

I can't imagine a way, at all, where you aren't a little bit questioning their ability. Whether it's a test or through talking.

I am a terrible test taker but an amazing interviewee. Hell if you ask me to do FizzBuzz I'll probably so fuck it and leave (because I'd look like an idiot) but if you ask where a race condition is in a bit of code I could pick it out easily. I'm the guy that you can give a simple problem and say "explain how you got there" and I have a deer in headlights look. Give me a complex problem and I'm all yours.

Every job I've ever gotten was because I knew someone. Only two had a "test" that the blog refers to. One of which, to this day, I'm still the highest test taker on it. The other.. I did shit on and still landed the job. And now we've brought back my .NET 1.1 memories that I thought I drank away... fuck me.

edit: removed some stuff because I'd rather not be head hunted.

Assign the candidate a real feature/bugfix to implement from home, remunerated accordingly. Make them sign an NDA, and both parties will have come out benefitted from the exchange.

You're right. I didn't know what remunerated meant so I must have glossed over and assumed wrongly. I feel silly now.

It should be apparent just from talking to them.

so waste my time on a lot of wannabe's? no tanks. ill give them a small bit of something to remove the liars. if you can't pass my simple 15 second test, you wont last long as a developer anyways. i dont havee time to inerview 50 people, 30 of which know fuk all about programming. you can, that's on you.

sorry, bit drunk now.. i think im going to stop now.

Yes. About 1/3-1/2 of the people do. These are the people who apply for everything.

For a helpdesk spot we had people come in who didn't know what an IP address was. I wish I were joking.

Honestly, this is why some department managers farm some of that work to HR.

This is often overlooked.

Simple questions such as: Make a loop that says "Hello World" 5 times in whatever language you're most experienced in.

Those should be sufficient to tell the people who have never coded in their life from those who have.

for(int i=0;i++;i<5) printf("Hello World");

Boom, done. And like that you weeded out a huge chunk of people. You don't need anything complicated to weed them out. Sure, you'll get the C in 21 days folks but from the interview you can ask them questions about their own projects and experiences. Hopefully you can wiff out bullshit.

If you ask me to fix a bug for you to get hired I'm going to ask how much you're willing to pay for my fix. Nothing is free. My time is not cheap.

Well I think the problem we're facing is it's hard to define a subverse named "programming". That's a wide range. So right off the bat you're in an awkward spot because of that.

Personally I'd prefer to see content like that as it relates to something only a programmer would care about or even understand. I doubt most on TIL know what CRC32 even is much less recognized it in the movie so I would argue it easily belongs here much less is borderline.

Another good example to consider is an interview about Kevin Mitnick (let's imagine this was more than a decade ago) on Oprah or something.

I suppose an interesting line in the modern grass is Edward Snowden. I would imagine reading about how he pulled some things off (from the technical aspect) would be reasonable but the political aspect of it would not be -- because quite frankly some of that was pretty damn impressive and I imagine many programmers would do well to learn many of those aspects of security. Or perhaps that might be better of in a security specific subverse. hmm.

Just something for you to ponder about ahead of time.

So just to be clear -- discussing, say, The Matrix using a legit SSH exploit would be against the rules, correct?

For those who don't know:

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/4831

Interesting because they might avoid things like this:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16891019/how-to-avoid-using-printf-in-a-signal-handler

and this: http://mcuoneclipse.com/2013/04/19/why-i-dont-like-printf/

If they aren't told or specifically looking for it that Googling could lead them down traps and bad habits that are often overlooked -- which is why so much third-party software is insecure and buggy.

If they were to post about the differences, we might be so inclined to elaborate more as well as provide alternatives depending on their situations or if they are doing it wrong. A "simple google search" does not net that because it's just that -- a "simple" google search. Some articles aren't even dating -- so they have no idea if the "latest security" is from 2001 or 2013. We, on the other hand, do know.

We also know to suggest using prepared statements and PDO for PHP instead of running SQL queries by hand -- which a newbie will not likely know (SQLI anyone?). We can also warn them about transactions and the importance of them as well as potential race conditions (something a newbie may never have thought of!). In fact, this happened to me! I was doing things "the old way" because I "did a simple Google search" and found out I was WAY wrong. Like holy shit insecure fuck me wrong. It looks me going out of my way to figure out what the latest bits where in PHP for security, how to handle things properly now. There's still one area I'm trying to decide how I feel one but that's not really relevant to this discussion.

See how such a little thing can have such an impact? What may seem silly to us, because we've ran through this gauntlet, is daunting to them -- I suggest it's better to guide them than to let them stumble like we did and run across wrong, or worse insecure, information.

It doesn't need to be a full discussion because a lot of people may not need to pipe in. Some may go "holy shit, I never knew that!" and those would be our lurkers -- those with a toe in the water whose programming cherry hasn't even really been popped yet.

A curious thought occurs in my mind: What kind of questions specifically do you think are appropriate here? I'm curious where your personal line is for what you what.

Can we define "beginner questions"?

Are you saying questions like "what's an int?"

How would you rank this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4627330/difference-between-fprintf-printf-and-sprintf

Further, is it acceptable to ask for recommended reading? Wouldn't this group be ideal, due to our experience, for knowing what's practical and what sucks? "No, that book sucks -- it teaches you bad habits."

What separates us from stackoverflow? It seems, at least to me, the main thing is we link to blog articles and such (keeping current, finding new stuff). So should we redirect programming questions to a site dedicated to programming questions and instead use this as a place for staying current?

I'm thinking out loud here.. not pushing for anything.