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ExcessBLarg! posted:That's an interesting position. What do you call this Java-like-but-not-Java language? It is perhaps a distinction without much difference, but I think it matters. Perhaps not enough to actually call it a new language (AndroidJ), but worth noting. Java on Android is different enough from Java on other platforms that, when Android becomes the main/only platform left that runs Java, it really will be "that Android language" and no longer that "write once run anywhere" language.
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Jul 8, 2015 19:18
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That's a big assumption that Java is actually going to disappear elsewhere. Still, given that J2SE is a build requirement for both Android apps and the OS itself, that guarantees the survival of at least a vestigial form (e.g., OpenJDK) of Oracle Java.
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Jul 8, 2015 19:25
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Skandranon posted:Android runs a different VM that Google wrote from scratch (Davlik) and so really could be considered a different language that happens to be almost identical to Java. Skandranon posted:It is perhaps a distinction without much difference, but I think it matters. Perhaps not enough to actually call it a new language (AndroidJ), but worth noting. Java on Android is different enough from Java on other platforms that, when Android becomes the main/only platform left that runs Java, it really will be "that Android language" and no longer that "write once run anywhere" language.
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Jul 8, 2015 19:26
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Star War Sex Parrot posted:Is C# code that runs on Mono rather than CLR not C#? If Microsoft has lost control of the platform, and it only ever runs on Mono, then that's a difference worth noting. As to if that's worth a name change or not, that's really up to whoever is writing the VM to say what 'language' it runs. Android runs Googles version of Java, and they still call it Java, but they could easily change that.
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Jul 8, 2015 19:38
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Skandranon posted:If Microsoft has lost control of the platform, and it only ever runs on Mono, then that's a difference worth noting. As to if that's worth a name change or not, that's really up to whoever is writing the VM to say what 'language' it runs. Android runs Googles version of Java, and they still call it Java, but they could easily change that. But that wouldn't make sense because it's still Java the language even if it's not Java the runtime environment. As far as I can tell, most of the confusion arises from the JRE and language having Java in the name and the rest is the language version stagnation on Android. Similarly, both of our browsers support some subset of some version of the ECMAScript spec but it's not a different language on each browser and if you stick with whatever subset IE8 supports you can make a write-once library for just about every browser out there.
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Jul 8, 2015 19:55
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rsjr posted:Please share why strings in C are so special and what great understanding knowing this has given you. The most recent: My coworkers were puzzling over why the hell a new specification had a "null terminator" on the end of one field, and what the hell is a null terminator anyway who would do that. Cue a small lecture on C-strings. Not that there was any practical use for a null terminator being there in this example so far as I knew, but for the C-thinking hardware geeks who constantly deal with legacy code maybe there was a reason. Skandranon posted:It is perhaps a distinction without much difference, but I think it matters. Perhaps not enough to actually call it a new language (AndroidJ), but worth noting. Java on Android is different enough from Java on other platforms that, when Android becomes the main/only platform left that runs Java, it really will be "that Android language" and no longer that "write once run anywhere" language. Agreed. And talking about applets, on my current project we'd been using an applet to talk to some hardware. Now we're sort of scratching our heads as to whether we'll be stuck with only Firefox (until they axe applets), or do we use some other technology, in which case hell why are we even doing this in Java in the first place we might as well have just built this on a JavaScript stack. I haven't been on a project like that yet, but at this point if you mention node.js in the office ears perk up and smiles form, the people who've worked in environments like that seem to love it. Munkeymon posted:But that wouldn't make sense because it's still Java the language even if it's not Java the runtime environment. As far as I can tell, most of the confusion arises from the JRE and language having Java in the name and the rest is the language version stagnation on Android. Similarly, both of our browsers support some subset of some version of the ECMAScript spec but it's not a different language on each browser and if you stick with whatever subset IE8 supports you can make a write-once library for just about every browser out there. gently caress older IEs with a rusty nail, but any modern browser is going to support the vast majority of things you want to do with not too much work. Is Android vs (whatever) the same way? I'm on a project now where we're pushing similar code to Android and desktop, and the rough amount of code that's shared between the two is zero. There's a lot of code that you can trivially port from one to the other, and pure Java logic is the same if you need to add numbers or whatever, but thanks to all the bits that are different we're basically coding two separate projects and someone copies between them when we need to share features. Different languages isn't far off the mark.
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Jul 8, 2015 20:17
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Skandranon posted:Android runs Googles version of Java, and they still call it Java, but they could easily change that. Skandranon posted:That's more part of why Java is dying than helping... So, honestly, even if Android's rise were zero sum, at worst it just represents a shift of the language's influence from Oracle to Google, it doesn't mean the language is dying. Second, even if Google did change the name of the Android Java dialect, it wouldn't suddenly lose it's Java heritage and most everyone would either call it Java, or a Java derivative, or at least recognize it's Java background. If nothing else, folks would still be writing ".java" source files and using "java.*" packages. To the specific point in this thread, it doesn't reduce the value of learning the Java language as the subset of the language that's useful for pedagogical purposes is still highly relevant.
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Jul 8, 2015 20:20
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ExcessBLarg! posted:To the specific point in this thread, it doesn't reduce the value of learning the Java language as the subset of the language that's useful for pedagogical purposes is still highly relevant. I wholeheartedly agree, I wasn't trying to derail the thread into an argument over semantics. Even if Java was never used anywhere but the classroom, so much of it translates well into other languages, like C# and JavaScript.
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Jul 8, 2015 20:25
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revdrkevind posted:The most recent: My coworkers were puzzling over why the hell a new specification had a "null terminator" on the end of one field, and what the hell is a null terminator anyway who would do that.
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Jul 8, 2015 20:34
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ExcessBLarg! posted:Does the specification use a linked-list data structure? If so, null termination is hardly surprising. But if it's using an array (as C strings do) I'd be puzzled why they didn't just length encode it. It's a PIA to store strings length-encoded in an EEPROM or whatever and then use them in functions that expect a NUL-terminated string (such as everything in stdlib). And what's worse is that you don't gain anything in speed anyways; the savings from avoiding strlen because you know the length are given right back by having to do a memcpy (I'm envisioning a scenario where the EEPROM image gets read straight into a struct - if you have a real string, you can just use the appropriate struct member directly, but if you don't you have to copy the bytes into a new string you've allocated elsewhere). Even if the string is a fixed length that can be hard-coded via a #define or static const int (avoiding the need to store the length in the nonvolatile storage), I'd rather waste a byte storing the terminator so that I don't have to gently caress around copying stuff in most situations.
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Jul 8, 2015 21:15
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revdrkevind posted:I'm on a project now where we're pushing similar code to Android and desktop, and the rough amount of code that's shared between the two is zero. There's a lot of code that you can trivially port from one to the other, and pure Java logic is the same if you need to add numbers or whatever, but thanks to all the bits that are different we're basically coding two separate projects and someone copies between them when we need to share features. Different languages isn't far off the mark. Well yeah, the display code is going to be very different but the fact that you can copy+paste code between the projects means that they use the same language and that you guys hosed up when you didn't create shared libraries.
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Jul 8, 2015 21:36
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Blotto Skorzany posted:It's a PIA to store strings length-encoded in an EEPROM or whatever and then use them in functions that expect a NUL-terminated string (such as everything in stdlib).
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Jul 8, 2015 22:44
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So I got an associates in computer science, am continuing to finish and getting bachelors (~2 years to go). if I want to look for internships to get some xp under my belt, and want to sell myself, is using the line "obtained associates with honors in C.S." make me sound like I am dressing up a not-hard achievement which doesn't mean much to people?
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Jul 9, 2015 01:43
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Progression Please posted:So I got an associates in computer science, am continuing to finish and getting bachelors (~2 years to go). if I want to look for internships to get some xp under my belt, and want to sell myself, is using the line "obtained associates with honors in C.S." make me sound like I am dressing up a not-hard achievement which doesn't mean much to people? First, it's just another fact in the context of a resume, nobody's going to think you're bragging. Put it on there. More importantly, be proud of your achievements. Yeah, it's not as difficult as obtaining a master's or a PHD; it's not walking on the moon either. So what? You spent time and effort and got something out of it that you can use to better your life. Don't look down on that. Also, since every young/new programmer who comes in here seems to think this way, I'll try and plant a seed while you're here. You are probably worried about how little you know, or how much more other programmers know than you, or generally just feel "behind" everyone else. Most people in our line of work seem to feel this way early in their careers. It's not true, it's just that you're aware of just how drat much there is to learn and know. Just get comfortable with the knowledge that you aren't going to know everything and that there will always be other people who know more about some poo poo than you do, and that early on that's going to be the case with just about every topic. Be confident in what you can do, and be eager to learn as much as you can about the rest, and you'll do well in this field.
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Jul 9, 2015 07:44
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Che Delilas posted:Just get comfortable with the knowledge that you aren't going to know everything and that there will always be other people who know more about some poo poo than you do, and that early on that's going to be the case with just about every topic. This times a thousand. Knowing things isn't really your job, there are no more exams. Your job is to be able to learn things quickly to allow you to solve problems. The internet is now your hard drive, you need to learn how to best load that into memory and do something useful with it.
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Jul 9, 2015 15:37
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I wasn't expecting some of the best advice ever. Thanks.
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Jul 9, 2015 18:33
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I think I messed up my first phone interview. I was supposed to validate a BST and I took like half an hour and needed two hints  And one of them was me missing something obvious. Is that bad? I feel like that's bad.
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Jul 9, 2015 20:13
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Cheston posted:I think I messed up my first phone interview. I was supposed to validate a BST and I took like half an hour and needed two hints First ever phone interview, or first phone interview for this application? I would be surprised if you did well on your first one ever. Either way, it's not as bad as you think. At least you got the hints and moved towards a solution, instead of sitting there mute for 30 minutes.
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Jul 9, 2015 20:40
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Cheston posted:I think I messed up my first phone interview. I was supposed to validate a BST and I took like half an hour and needed two hints It depends on the standards of the job, the company, and the interviewer. I'll go out on a limb though and say that for any reasonable entry-level position, the fact that you arrived at a solution at all puts you head and shoulders above a lot of applicants.
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Jul 10, 2015 02:01
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AuxPriest posted:I think the biggest interview skill I've learned that only came from being in a lot of them is to be comfortable with the interviewers and be personable. This is incredibly important because remember that you're going to be someone's coworker and ideally they'll want to rely on you for getting stuff done. Most interviewers are taking time out of their busy work day to interview you. If you're nice to them and talkative, at least it'll make their day a bit better. As an overall strategy, the way to get better at developer interviews is to be honest with yourself and think about what you have to do to improve. I wasn't great at any whiteboarding interviews, so I got myself to watch a video of how someone solved whiteboard problems. I took every opportunity to do phone screener questions and interview homework questions to the best of my ability. Every little bit builds up confidence and skill and you become one step closer to landing that job. The hardest part for me was conquering the fear that I wasn't good enough. I bet I'm still not good enough for a bunch of positions, but I have learned to accept it and to push myself towards learning new things and getting even better at what I do know. It helps that when code works, it feels incredibly gratifying - otherwise being a developer would be the worst job haha. Tezzeract fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Jul 10, 2015 |
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Jul 10, 2015 02:39
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I have a phone screen with google tomorrow. The guy said it'll only take like 15 minutes so I'm assuming this is not a coding interview. Is he just gonna ask me poo poo about my resume / basic knowledge or something? I graduated two years ago, I hope I haven't forgotten all the really basic poo poo I'm supposed to know.
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Jul 10, 2015 02:44
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Illusive gently caress Man posted:I have a phone screen with google tomorrow. The guy said it'll only take like 15 minutes so I'm assuming this is not a coding interview. Is he just gonna ask me poo poo about my resume / basic knowledge or something? I graduated two years ago, I hope I haven't forgotten all the really basic poo poo I'm supposed to know. If 'the guy' is your recruiter, then it's just a conversation about who you are, what the job is, what's going to happen next, etc. It's not a screening unless you go out of your way to disqualify yourself. The technical phone screens will happen later, and you will want to study your fundamentals (specifically the topics from the slides you'll get from your recruiter) for those.
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Jul 10, 2015 03:05
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Steely Glint posted:If 'the guy' is your recruiter, then it's just a conversation about who you are, what the job is, what's going to happen next, etc. It's not a screening unless you go out of your way to disqualify yourself. The technical phone screens will happen later, and you will want to study your fundamentals (specifically the topics from the slides you'll get from your recruiter) for those. oh okay, cool. I've been burning through 'elements of programming interviews' on paper the last couple days. Tomorrow my whiteboard arrives so hopefully I'll get some practice in before poo poo heats up.
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Jul 10, 2015 03:36
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People know you're serious when you bring your own whiteboard.
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Jul 10, 2015 05:52
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Cheston posted:I think I messed up my first phone interview. I was supposed to validate a BST and I took like half an hour and needed two hints They probably do not expect you to have a perfect prepared answer. They are probably checking that a) you know what a BST is, and b) you can attempt to solve a coding problem without falling apart. The purpose of the phone interview is to see if it is worth their time to invite you to an in-person interview. If you had solved it in less time, then they probably would have kept asking questions until you ran out of prepared material and were forced to improvise. I had a similar experience and left my first phone interview feeling very self-conscious, but I got an offer in the end.
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Jul 10, 2015 15:33
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Newf posted:People know you're serious when you bring your own whiteboard. I assume it's for practicing coding on a whiteboard, since you know, that's part of most decent programming interviews and every set of advice for programming interviews includes, "practice on a whiteboard, trust me it's way different than coding on a keyboard."
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Jul 10, 2015 17:49
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Newf posted:People know you're serious when you bring your own whiteboard. No no no, bring in your own whiteboard paint. Then paint one of the walls and do it on there. It shows initiative.
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Jul 10, 2015 18:18
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I'm looking into one of these bootcamp courses. They want £4.5k for a 16 week course: is this a reasonable price for this sort of thing, and in general are they worth it? I studied humanities and I'm looking at a career change (I'd be 26 by the time I finished). Wouldn't mind going into something with an actual chance of a job.
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Jul 10, 2015 18:28
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Bootcamp courses aren't going to teach you enough to be effective over the long term unless you put a ton of time in; they generally just get you to a point where you're considered hirable by a startup. The one you linked appears to have you participate from home, too, which is an awful idea because you're never going to be as fully engaged as if you were doing it in-person. They also teach you Ruby as a baseline which is not worth your time in today's environment, and based on a cursory look at the modules themselves, they don't really teach you anything applicable to most real world jobs, such as one of the currently popular frameworks. I should clarify that most programmers write really terrible code, so trying to teach you proper OOP instead of just knowing how to use a framework and get something shipped (because shipping > all in the startup world) isn't accomplishing enough for you. "Agile Methodologies" as a module also sounds like a gigantic waste of time. Look elsewhere or teach yourself. I hate JavaScript but if you're going to pay for a bootcamp with the sole purpose of getting a first job, a lot of startups will toss money at any idiot who has a half an idea how to use JS, Node, and whatever the framework flavor of the month is. It's your safest bet for having a wider range of opportunities.
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Jul 10, 2015 18:56
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Drastic Actions posted:No no no, bring in your own whiteboard paint. Then paint one of the walls and do it on there. It shows initiative. "I'm sorry, we don't feel like you'll be a good fit for the position. We're looking for whiteboard people who have nailed whiteboards onto walls, not screwed them in or painted them on."
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Jul 10, 2015 21:40
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Obliterati posted:I'm looking into one of these bootcamp courses. They want £4.5k for a 16 week course: is this a reasonable price for this sort of thing, and in general are they worth it? I studied humanities and I'm looking at a career change (I'd be 26 by the time I finished). Wouldn't mind going into something with an actual chance of a job. I got my start with a bootcamp course on the US West Coast. I, and most of the people who I knew in my cohort, found a job in the industry within a month of graduating. I don't know what the market is like in other places, so it might be different in Scotland. I considered it as a way to cheaply and quickly go from "newbie who doesn't know poo poo" to "newbie who knows enough to teach himself more than the very basics". The price for the one I attended was less than what that comes to in USD, but I selected for price and found an outlier. Most of the ones I looked at would have been more expensive. I think it was a good decision, but I liked computers going in and have the kind of mind that lends itself well to engineering. The people in my class who struggled the most tended not to like computers and to have the kind of mind that does some other thing well. The home/office part of the main weeks of the program is a bit of a concern. It's not really explained, but I hope it means something like "you are learning at the CodeClan office, but we won't be pissed at you if you fall sick and do a couple days from home". What's worth paying for in these things, in my opinion, is the support that doing a definite thing at a definite place/time helps lend to your life. Also, the support that having a group of people around you all in the same position learning the same stuff gives you is valuable. If you can do the whole thing from home, there isn't that. In that situation, if you have the level of intense focus needed to learn to program from home, books are cheaper and you could pay a working programmer less than a bootcamp to tell you what books to read and maybe provide on-demand support if you get really stuck. Jobs were out there in my case, the material you learn is just enough to get you started. A few things are a dead-end or boondoggle -- on CodeClan, "Agile development methods" seems like a waste of time, because every organization has a unique combination of bad management and bad processes. Some combinations of them get called "Waterfall", others get called "Agile", and still others get called "Scrum". That's all stuff you'd pick up on the first few weeks of a job and a bootcamp is going to teach you a theoretical version of it that doesn't actually exist anywhere in the world.
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Jul 10, 2015 22:10
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Cheston posted:I think I messed up my first phone interview. I was supposed to validate a BST and I took like half an hour and needed two hints It's bad. That question has two outcomes that are good: they'll solve it quickly and get it right the first time, or they'll solve it quickly but mistakenly compare nodes only to their children, and then say "oh drat!" when you point it out to them and fix their mistake right away, which involves a slight refactoring of the code that they have no problem with. A rarer good outcome is that they miss the empty tree case and fix it when you point out to them.
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Jul 10, 2015 23:50
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sarehu posted:It's bad. That question has two outcomes that are good: they'll solve it quickly and get it right the first time, or they'll solve it quickly but mistakenly compare nodes only to their children, and then say "oh drat!" when you point it out to them and fix their mistake right away, which involves a slight refactoring of the code that they have no problem with. A rarer good outcome is that they miss the empty tree case and fix it when you point out to them. Don't listen to sarehu... He's here to scare you, but completely harmless, like that creepy old man at the end of the street in the old house
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Jul 11, 2015 00:50
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What I say is merely true. Validating a BST is a common warmup question, to get the juices flowing for the rest of the interview.
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Jul 11, 2015 02:20
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It's been about five months after starting at my job, and I'm getting a little worried. Those five months have almost entirely been about bugfixing and feature upkeep on a very, very specific part of our application - which makes sense, that's the team I'm on, but I'm beginning to wonder if that's just all I'm good for, or if I'm not getting support in branching out. I haven't had much opportunity to work on anything outside of my narrowly-focused team, and my manager seems to discourage me asserting things about my role (like when I suggested changes to the escalation system and when I determined that performance issues were due to our framework rather than our charting library), and he seems a little too insistent on exactly what I should be doing. I guess I just feel like he doesn't have any confidence in me, which is really disappointing. (I could talk more about the stuff going on with him and me, if that helps.) Am I just expecting too much of this? Am I being too neurotic about my role in the company? I know that I'm certainly not perfect, and I've only gotten more and more aware of what I lack (I have to say my confidence has plummeted since starting this job), but even then, I still want to be engaged and excited about what I do, and I don't think I'm in that place right now. What can I do to make the most of the opportunities I have around me?
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Jul 11, 2015 02:53
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Pollyanna posted:I guess I just feel like he doesn't have any confidence in me, which is really disappointing. Confidence and trust are earned by doing your job and being good at it over an extended period. If I recall correctly, you're a fairly new developer and you've only been there for 5 months. What have you done in those 5 months to earn trust and inspire confidence?
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Jul 11, 2015 03:31
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You moved from a very small fish bowl to a way larger one... As someone who's about to graduate from the same program (and campus) that you did, doesn't it make sense that at least part of your problem is that you went from being one of the stronger students to being one of the newest people at a company of fairly experienced people? Don't forget that 90% of the industry suffers from imposter syndrome.
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Jul 11, 2015 04:30
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Pollyanna posted:Am I being too neurotic about my role in the company? Probably? You just wrote a ton of words so I'm leaning towards "yes". Pollyanna posted:What can I do to make the most of the opportunities I have around me? We can't answer that for you. We don't know your specifics and whatevs. I guess it's good that you're asking that question yourself, and looking for answers. Take 2 chill pills, keep doing your job and come back in a few months.
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Jul 11, 2015 05:28
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I'm not sure how to phrase this in a great way and I feel ridiculous asking it but, is there any good reason not to have working at Google or Microsoft as an end goal as a career? For some background in why I'm asking that question, I've been working at a lovely software company in the suburbs of Toronto for 2 years out of school and I'm looking for a new job downtown. While there are some good looking places I've found, it just seems like they all pale to what I can gather about Google or Microsoft (or let's throw Facebook and whoever in here too). Looking at what they offer, and assuming I could manage to get an offer to work at one of those in my life, it looks like it pays WAY more than anything here even adjusted for the Bay Area pricing (Amazon entry level salaries for the office here are already pretty drat high for entry level from what I can tell), you get whatever ridiculous benefits Google must offer, if you can swing it you get to work on products that run on ridiculous scales and everything affects at least hundreds of thousands of people, and you get to transfer to offices around the world (from what I can tell). I feel stupid saying it but I can't find any reason to not want to keep trying to get a job there. piratepilates fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Jul 12, 2015 |
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Jul 12, 2015 02:29
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piratepilates posted:I'm not sure how to phrase this in a great way and I feel ridiculous asking it but, Big company office politics can suck. Microsoft in particular is known for having a really lovely, cutthroat corporate culture, although that's changing from what I've heard. About half of my co-workers are ex-Microsoft folks and they don't have overwhelmingly positive things to say.
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Jul 12, 2015 03:04
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