We will occasionally pepper in a few brainteasers at the end of our interviews. Yes, they are sometimes the you-don’t-bury-survivors type questions. And then there’s the cube question which I have written about previously. One of the guys on my team likes to ask “port association” questions. He gives a port number and the candidate [...]
Over the past 6 months, I’ve subscribed to the “DBTalk” distribution list at work and I’ve really been enjoying it. Here’s are my top 2 reasons: 1. Though I know there are many .NET coders who also happen to be very capable database designers and developers, I believe that the many of us still have a lot to [...]
Last week’s post about The Anti-team by Jemery Miller reminded me of a book I picked up a while back: Herding Cats: A Primer for Programmers Who Lead Programmers by J. Hank Rainwater. In his book, Rainwater offers tips and management techniques on everything from code reviews to managing a distributed workforce. With good humor, he discusses dozens [...]
If I had to guess, I would say I conducted at least 100 phone or in-person interviews last year and all of the onsite interviews followed the same standard format: 1. Three or four lead developers, the interviewee and I sit in a large conference room. 2. Per our request, the candidate spends 3-5 minutes [...]
When I’m up against a tight deadline, I tend to avoid tasks which could unnecessarily eat up precious time. These tasks aren’t always the most challenging or difficult, but I recognize them as having more than one possible solution which will result in my over-thinking, over-researching and/or over-architecting (aka wasting time.) Time-gobbling task get flagged with a //TODO comment [...]
You may remember singing There’s a Hole in Bucket when you were younger. This is the song where boys sing the part of Henry, the poor guy who desperately needs to fix his bucket, and girls sing the part of Liza, his wife, who dreams up the fix. There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear [...]
A couple of years back, I was tasked with compiling C# coding standards for our development department. To be honest, I wasn’t all that excited about the assignment. Previous attempts had been met with quite a bit of resistance and worthless debate and I wasn’t sure I really wanted to open that can of worms again. After [...]
Continue reading about Coding Standards – The Devil Is In The Details
I have heard many endings to this quote over the years. “If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t going to learn anything.” “If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t living.” “If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t taking enough risk.” There may be others. Take your pick. Choose the most appropriate quote for the situation [...]
by Charles Petzold
by Roy Osherove
