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Why I Don't Prepare for Job Interviews
Cramming may get a candidate a job. But they won’t succeed at the job if they don’t have the skills and experience needed.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,748 posts.
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Just Say No
I grew up in Amsterdam, which is a pretty rough town by Dutch Standards. As a kid there are all kinds of temptations and peer-pressure to join in in bad stuff is something that is hard to escape. But somehow that never was a big factor for me, computers and electronics kept me fascinated for long enough that none of…
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Why Won't You Answer My Question?
I've spent more time than I would like to admit on various Q&A sites and forums related to development, where I have answered thousands of questions. Generally, the questions stay within the confines of such forums, however after waking up to my personal inbox being flooded with a
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Evidence Based Scheduling
Software developers don’t really like to make schedules. Usually, they try to get away without one. “It’ll be done when it’s done!” they say, expecting that such a brave, funny zinger will reduce t…
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Painless Functional Specifications
When The Joel Test first appeared, one of the biggest sore points readers reported had to do with writing specs. It seems that specs are like flossing: everybody knows they should be writing them, …
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Google: My interview experience
Gil Vegliach's blog
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The Perils of JavaSchools
Lazy kids. Whatever happened to hard work? A sure sign of my descent into senility is bitchin’ and moanin’ about “kids these days,” and how they won’t or can’t d…
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Hard-won lessons: Five years with Node.js
After five years working with Node.js, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve already shared a few stories, but this time I wanted to focus on the ones I learned the hard way. Bugs, challenges, surprises, and...
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I Stopped Attending Programming Meet-ups
I’ve decided I’m no longer attending programming meet-ups. The reason I’m no longer attending is because they’re free.
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How many jobs really require college?
We send too many people to college and high school -- by factor of five
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Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications
Full disclosure: my employer makes a Slack alternative. All my concerns about the use of Slack type chat services apply equally to its competitors, including my employer’s.
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Cargo Cult Agile (2008)
Back in the 40's, the story goes, American troops landed on a remote island. The natives of the island had never seen modern civilization before, and were amazed by the men and materials Allied forces brought by the island. They watched the troops set up an airstrip and a tower, don headphones, and call great metal…
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Typing the technical interview
In the formless days, long before the rise of the Church, all spells were woven of pure causality, all actions were permitted, and death was common. Many witches were disfigured by their magicks, found crumpled at the center of a circle of twisted, glass-eaten trees, and stones which burned unceasing in the pooling…
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The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer
Being involved in open source software is rewarding, yeah? You start off contributing to your favorite project, and it feels so heartwarming when that project’s maintainers recognize your effort. Then a few years later you somehow end up responsible for that project, and maybe some satellite projects, and people are…
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What I Learned Managing Site Reliability for Some of the Busiest Gambling Sites
tl;dr For several years I managed the 3rd line site reliability operation for many of the world’s busiest gambling sites, working for a little-known company that built and ran the core backen…
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There’s no glory in overworking, it’s just imminent burnout
it’s just imminent burnout.
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Programmer Competency Matrix (2016)
A matrix for rating programmers on computer science, software engineering, programming, security, infrastructure, data, AI-assisted development, experience and knowledge, from 2ⁿ to log(n).
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When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are
On August 31, 2015, I started a Ph.D. in cryptography at TU Eindhoven, working with Tanja Lange and Dan Bernstein. On December 2, 2016, I…
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Acing the technical interview
If you want to get a job as a software witch, you’re going to have to pass a whiteboard interview. We all do them, as engineers–often as a part of our morning ritual, along with arranging a beautiful grid of xterms across the astral plane, and compulsively running ls in every nearby directory–just in case things have…
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How I Made $70k Self-Publishing a Book about Ruby on Rails
Did I mention how awesome it is to live 30 minutes from a ski lift?In March of 2016, I launched a course called The Complete Guide to Rails Performance. Sinc...
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How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS degree
A story about the unconventional strategies I used to land a job I love.
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On Programming Languages: Why My Dad Went from Programming to Driving a Bus
I discuss, with stories, why programming language choice matters and provide guidelines, along with an infographic of popular 2017 languages.