Job thread

[Bungee]

I had to 'proof read' or rather find errors in printed out C++ code for my first interview out of uni. While also explaining what the program may be supposed to do and what I would do differently other than fixing those errors. That was with some rather youngish engineering department lead and the project lead I would've been working for. It wasn't as bad as what other colleagues from uni told me about their interviews with the already mentioned search algorithms and worse.

[Yegolev]

"Well, sir, I'd start off by not printing out C++ code...."

[Samwise]

Ugh, yeah, my least favorite part of this recent interview process was writing out C++ on a whiteboard.  Especially when I couldn't just handwave "okay, this is a linked list, it works like a reasonable linked list."  Fuuuu.

On the plus side I got an email today saying they're ready to make me an offer.   

[Yegolev]

Godspeed.

Today I Learned: Closure in functional programming.  I had to read two different explanations but I feel like I have it.  This is the sort of thing that causes me to wish I'd taken CS courses at some point in the past.

[Samwise]

Godspeed.

Today I Learned: Closure in functional programming.  I had to read two different explanations but I feel like I have it.  This is the sort of thing that causes me to wish I'd taken CS courses at some point in the past.

This book.  First CS textbook I used at Berkeley and still the one I recommend to people who want to start learning programming at a conceptual level (as opposed to having a practical need to learn a particular language or implement a particular thing).

[Yegolev]

A wizard conjuring a lambda?  Seems easy.

[Teleku]

It's all fun and games until:

[Yegolev]

You also can have a reading assignment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus

[Samwise]

You also can have a reading assignment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus

The reason I recommend the wizard book to people is that if you read about lambda calculus on wikipedia it sounds like something really difficult and complicated, when it's not really.

The way I visualize it is, you have a machine (a "function") that takes a thing in and spits a thing out, right?  And it can be different kind of things.  So you can have a "doubler" machine that takes 2 and spits out 4, or you can have a "capitalizer" machine that takes "hello" and spits out "HELLO", or whatever.  Lambda calculus is having a machine that spits out other machines, like a "sorter-making" machine where you give it a "comparing" machine and it spits out a "sorting" machine.

[Yegolev]

Having gone well beyond DiffEq in college, I personally don't think lamda is hard, but I constantly run into people who are pretty sure anything above algebra is magic or horseshit.  It was only confusing until I realized that it was a discrete concept which was implemented in the language (in this case, I'm making another run at Go).  If you don't realize that you're just returning a function along with an associated set of variables in the same context, you might look at the code and wonder how the hell the variables remember their state.  Answer: Because it was designed to do that.

[Hawkbit]

Godspeed.

Today I Learned: Closure in functional programming.  I had to read two different explanations but I feel like I have it.  This is the sort of thing that causes me to wish I'd taken CS courses at some point in the past.

This book.  First CS textbook I used at Berkeley and still the one I recommend to people who want to start learning programming at a conceptual level (as opposed to having a practical need to learn a particular language or implement a particular thing).

Thank you for sharing that link. I went to business school and got a degree in Web Development, so it covered everything from graphic design to building Rails apps. About 2/3 through, I realized what I really wanted was a CS degree, but was too far into the existing program financially to switch majors. In my spare time I'm trying to dig into fundamentals - the stuff we were not taught. I mean, I can hack together a site or app that does a lot of cool stuff, but it's ugly code and I wish I had been taught from the start the core concepts.

In hindsight, WebD as a degree is bullshit. It got me a decent job which is what matters at the end of the day, but there's another level of knowledge that simply wasn't passed down. Anyways, long winded way of saying thanks for sharing information.

[Samwise]

 

[Rasix]

Instead of my new job I thought I was starting in a week, I'll have a different new job in a week, which I was just told about today (in passing too, wtf).  It's not even really final either, and I'll have to consult on the other job, because they're likely replacing me with someone that doesn't have near the amount of VMWare experience (or any).

I think I would have preferred the first job, because I would have had a huge amount of freedom in how I tackled it and there would have been much lower expectations.  Now, I'll be put into a high pressure situation where they can pull my funding if I don't live up to the hype.

Yay.  

[Chimpy]

You still working for the acronymn?

[Yegolev]

[Chimpy]

Oh, I know you work for them now.


But Rasix worked around product lines that I actually have to use. 

[Rasix]

You still working for the acronymn?

Of course. I'll still be working around flash based storage. Might be touching SVC as well (*cat vomit gif*).

I'm being forced to leave my current project a month before GA. Wonderful QA practices in action.  

[Chimpy]

Maybe you can help the SVC people figure out how to reclaim zeroed space from thin provisioned volumes  

[Yegolev]

I work around product lines you get to use.

[Rasix]

Maybe you can help the SVC people figure out how to reclaim zeroed space from thin provisioned volumes  

You can PM me the specific issue and I can check on it. This product uses SVC so I'll have access to their architects as well.

[Yegolev]

Go home.

https://twitter.com/eldracote/status/748516257494892544

[Rasix]

 

Anyone going to VMWorld this year?

[Yegolev]

Negative.  Might go to ChefConf, but TBD.  Coincides with a production launch.

I'd be more eager if it wasn't in Austin.  I keep going to Austin for some reason.

[schild]

Is there a city you'd rather go to in Austin? And if so, why?

[schild]

(Oof, that's in July, yea, I can see wanting to go anywhere else for work in July, except Arizona)

[Yegolev]

It's just that I've already been there twice and sometimes conferences are in places I haven't been or haven't been in a long time.  Austin is great, but I've seen hers already.  I'm probably being dumb.

[Strazos]

Back in the US for a few weeks, but currently stuck at the San Antonio airport. Why, you ask? Because the guy driving my car up from Monterrey is still stuck in a multi-hour long line to re-import My car to the US and get across the bridge. #lolmexico

I have no idea how people put up with that crap. And he picked up the car at 0530 this morning...

[schild]

San Antonio is not the best place in Texas to be stuck, but if you have a few hours might I suggest getting a meal at Hsiu Yu or Bangkok 54. And if you're feeling like a shitty American, there should be a Raisin Cain's nearby.

[Yegolev]

People sure are desperate for anyone who can click around inside the AWS console.

[ezrast]

As someone currently in the middle of recreating a perfectly functional webserver because the first time I dared to do load balancing via an ordinary nginx install rather than clicking around inside the AWS console, those people can suck it.

[Trippy]

Nginx sucks for load balancing. Use haproxy instead.

[ezrast]

Is there a particular way in which it sucks? Our crappy site is not likely to get enough traffic for me to really care about performance as long as my uptime stats are okay, though I guess having real health checks would be worth it.

Not that anyone's let me spend enough time on monitoring to actually have uptime stats.

[Yegolev]

Not an expert but haproxy is the way to go.  Put that in front of your webservers (nginx or apache).  I don't know the depths of its health checking but it does work pretty well.  Also that fits the "do one job and do it well" paradigm.

[Yegolev]

In discussions on office locations, whe someone says there is a gym available it is now a thing (IMO) to ask if they mean a Pokemon gym.

[schild]

In discussions on office locations, whe someone says there is a gym available it is now a thing (IMO) to ask if they mean a Pokemon gym.