Why Can't Programmers.. Program?

https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/

by tmfi • 5 years ago

34 44 5 years ago

blog.codinghorror.com

f69281c• 5 years ago

I'm in the middle of a programming boot camp where they just blaze from topic to topic to topic, we never do any considerable project work to nail any of it down, and even though they state clearly "you need to be studying outside of this class", I know a bunch of students won't because it's 12 hours a week and billed as something you can do on top of a full time job.

So once these people graduate, OF COURSE they're going to stumble over for loops and if statements; the only think they know is how to follow along in vs code while someone builds a react app over zoom.

weatherlight• 5 years ago

that sounds awful.

detaro2• 5 years ago

(2007)

water8• 5 years ago

Why can't imperfect people be less judgmental

proc02• 5 years ago

I would attribute some of it to translating the word problem into a logic problem, which I think Fizzbuzz is really testing. Once you see it's just one conditional testing multiples of 3 and 5, and understand it covers the whole problem, it becomes trivial.

cameronh90• 5 years ago

If you can’t translate word problems into code, in what sense are you a programmer though?

What problems don’t boil down to that?

MikeDelta3• 5 years ago

I unfortunately see a lot of developers who struggle with solving problems and want you to solve it so they can simply fill in the blanks. Kind of a code-typist.

The other developer of this type that I've seen can only connect cloud services together.

proc02• 5 years ago

I'm just saying the tricky part is not writing the code, as it is assumed at the surface level. I have done interviews and have accepted explanatory answers for coding problems because it is obvious sometimes that they know the underlying logic that can be translated into whatever language/framework.

dragonsky• 5 years ago

Here they are talking about putting a significant time limit on solving the problem. I'd classify myself as being a reasonable programmer (and I get paid for it), but I generally don't dive from reading a specification into complete code within 15 minutes regardless of how simple the problem is. You spend time thinking about edge cases that you will have to make accommodation for, areas where the requirements are not well defined and need clarification and also talking to the person who wrote the requirements to check your understanding. specifications are rarely perfect, if they were, they would be code that could run.

grawprog• 5 years ago

I'm mostly self taught other than some basic in high school and R in university. It's taken me years of working on different kinds of projects, reading tons of books and practicing to the point where i became competent enough to work on a decently large project from start to finish and complete something.

I don't feel like i really went from programming stuff to knowing how to program until after i'd finished a bunch of smaller programs in a few different languages. Like a lot. Years worth.

There came a point though where, even if i was working with an unfamiliar language, once the syntax is out of the wat, i started thinking about the problems i was working on differently. I understand now how computers work on a more fundamental level and what the code is actually doing under the hood. What's actually happening when i declare a variable, define a function or compile some code.

Before i understood that stuff I realize now i was always kinda just shooting in the dark only vaguely understanding what i was actually doing.

But, it took a long time. I guess the very first time i ever programmed was i dunno at like 5 or 6 years old when i managed to write a loop on the atari. It took almost two decades learning on and off for me to actually understand what i was doing.

I'm still not sure if i'd feel qualified enough to apply for a professional programming job.

hertzrat• 5 years ago

None of the code/design/architecture I wrote this year will help convince an interviewer I can program. Can’t even show it to them because it breaks the apples to apples system they are trying to do with their robotic standardized questions. Still have to play the game: leetcode drills, whiteboard practice, learning to talk and make jokes while white boarding, re-learning Java for the sole reason of needing it for interviews, picking a good “biggest flaw” ahead of time, etc. I wish I got to write algorithms all day but if you actually want to learn to contribute to a project, design and just reading code trumps algorithms, especially since the algorithms can just be looked up the once-per-year they are needed

There are (edit:almost) zero programmers who can’t write a while loop. There are just 199/200 people who are stressed out by the bizzaro interview process that was designed by aliens to promote leetcode. There are however millions of programmers who can’t write maintainable or readable code

orf• 5 years ago

I interviewed at Apple once. In the second technical call on codepad I was struggling with something really basic in Python (which I have 15+ years experience with) due to nerves and the general weirdness of the situation. My struggling stressed me out, which made it harder to concentrate, which stressed me out, etc. While I was struggling the interviewer said "come on, if you can't answer this then how am I going to convince anyone you're a good programmer?".

That spun me out and I crashed even harder. In his eyes I'm one of those 199 people who "can't even code".

Fuck 'em, if coding is knowing how to implement weird palindrome-related algorithms in a completely alien browser-based IDE (if you can call it that) over a call with a several second delay in your kitchen at 9pm local-time after a hard days work then maybe I can't code.

_qulr6• 5 years ago

I interviewed at Apple once. In the second technical call on codepad I was struggling with something really basic

I had a very similar experience. Moreover, on the phone call there seemed to be some kind of soft ticking sound in the background, like a clock. It was very distracting. I wonder if the interviewer was actually timing me.

tharkun__• 5 years ago

That sounds like an absolutely horrible experience. I detest live programming exercises for the same reason. From both a candidate perspective and mine as a hiring manager now.

At my current place (and before as well) we give the candidates a 'take home test'. The problem is a bit larger than FizzBuzz, so that we can see how they would structure things, if they can write clean code, write tests etc. The 'take home' nature solves quite a few of the problems you mentioned, both for the candidate and us if you ask me. And even there you have to be careful that things don't get out of hand. Nobody good who currently has a job is going to spend any time on a take home test that the employer expects them to spend hours upon hours on over a short period of time.

Of course there are always managers that fear it's too easy to cheat but if you ask me, that's either never happened to us or if so, it was very clear after talking to the candidate in person about their code, that we wouldn't hire them anyway, so at best they cheated us out of some interview time.

kordlessagain• 5 years ago

UPDATE: If you think that I just claimed that 199 out of 200 working programmers cannot code, stop immediately and either read my follow-up explaining the math, or read Joel’s article on why companies aren’t as picky as they think they are. Thank you.

http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/01/dont-overthink-fizzbuzz....

I will note the person making this observation is apparently incapable of securing their website with SSL!

perryizgr82• 5 years ago

That's an http page, why would you expect it to be encrypted with SSL??

emrah2• 5 years ago

It's not bizzaro if you think like where the concept originated. It comes from FAANG size companies that do thousands of interviews and need a "standardized" way to evaluate candidates, compare them to each other. Very similar to how SAT scores are supposed to evaluate & compare millions of students.

Smaller companies should absolutely break away from this way of interviewing to find developers that can do great work for them but the pressure (or envy?) to conform is too strong I guess.

_qulr6• 5 years ago

It comes from FAANG size companies that do thousands of interviews and need a "standardized" way to evaluate candidates, compare them to each other.

The irony is that the founders and initial employees of these companies were never interviewed in this way. They were mostly just school friends. So it's highly dubious whether these specific hiring practices were even crucial to the success of those companies. People are emulating the wrong things and just cargo culting.

MikeDelta3• 5 years ago

There is a huge difference between knowing syntax and being able to write code. I have even seen senior developers write very convoluted code because they couldn't break down the problem in its simplest components.

I would say that the ability to write good code is related to problem solving capacity and intelligence.

detaro2• 5 years ago

And I'm fairly sure I've seen people stumble over the reverse direction: Being optimistic that they remember the syntax for a language they haven't used in a while, and then in a stress situation failing to remember basics.

Someone with experience in a few languages has no difficulty reading code in a lot of languages, and can get going in them quite quickly, but the first few hours/days are going to involve a lot of looking up trivial things, especially if starting with an empty page instead of tweaking in existing code.

MikeDelta3• 5 years ago

The below github account is making fun of the concept 'Enterprise code' and contains an Enterprise-level FizzBuzz solution. I have never seen that much code do so little.

https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpris...

imbnwa• 5 years ago

Been pitching in with the Java backends as a frontender at work and the impl/interface distinction on a per singleton basis in just... why? It's a fucking singleton.

jfengel• 5 years ago

Presumably, so they can stub out the singleton for testing. It makes sense, sometimes, like the way your global database is a singleton that you really don't want on every test.

But in a lot of cases it's overkill and makes everything harder. Following a rule to always do it is simple but using your judgement is better. The best code minimizes side effects and reduces stubs and fakes.

merb• 5 years ago

well it has tests, this is a plus!

_qulr6• 5 years ago

This submission should be labeled (2007).

Or better, bury the article in an unmarked grave and never see it again. Few people have done more harm to hiring in the industry than Atwood and Spolsky.

tomca32• 5 years ago

Oh I’m not sure what you mean but certainly sounds interesting. Can you expand a bit on Atwood and Spolsky’s influence on hiring?

_qulr6• 5 years ago

"A new study from North Carolina State University and Microsoft finds that the technical interviews currently used in hiring for many software engineering positions test whether a job candidate has performance anxiety rather than whether the candidate is competent at coding." https://news.ncsu.edu/2020/07/tech-job-interviews-anxiety/

Programmers can program, but they usually aren't stage performers. Using auditions to evaluate non-performers is doomed to failure, predictably.

renewiltord• 5 years ago

This is a solved problem. Since 2007, everyone knows the answer to this: the search population is dominated by the ones who can’t.

It’s the same as when you get that bag of mixed nuts and pick out a bunch, put the almonds back in and eat only the pistachios. About ten minutes in, your search for pistachios becomes ever so hard. You take a handful of almonds out, put them back in and repeat, barely seeing a pistachio.

vsskanth• 5 years ago

Programmers with degrees claiming years of experience who can't write FizzBuzz - Is this true as of 2021 ?

It would be astonishing to me if it's true though.

justin66• 5 years ago

...because humanity seems to have gotten a lot more intelligent in the last fourteen years?

the_only_law2• 5 years ago

I would imagine not, in part because of how much fizzbuzz is a meme now they’ve probably been exposed to it.

the_only_law2• 5 years ago

I’ve been sitting in some interviews for the first time from the other side, and there are a handful of observations I’ve made both from the candidates we’ve interviewed and myself. Just to note, this is at a typical boring enterprise type company. No leetcode or take homes. The interviews primarily consist of mostly very simple “trivia” type questions that someone with the bare minimum experience with our stack should understand.

One of the big things I’ve noticed, is people don’t know what they haven’t used. Something pretty common I’ve noticed in some candidates is that when they’re asked how they would X they start going into some over engineered proprietary framework or library that they’ve used at their past company rather the more fundamental answer we’re looking for. They never really get the chance to learn things because their first job out of school has them working on problems that require a very limited skill sort or ability. I can’t speak to how 2007 was, but I wonder how many programmers couldn’t figure out fizzbuzz because they simply never had to use modulo division. I’ve never had to use the modulo operator in my time building CRUD apps and frankly I had never heard of it until I had heard of fizzbuzz many years ago. Keep in mind that many people come from non traditional background and do not have any sort of technical education besides what they learned themselves and that for a number of business that’s been enough to hire them to maintain whatever business applications they’re working on.

I myself am not a particularly good developer either. Though I could pass a fizzbuzz test there’s no way I’m making it through even some of the easier leetcode problems. And so, at this point I’m looking for a way out of the industry. But when you look at how much money even no name companies will pay for a job that is not gatekept by expensive credentials and can be learned on your own time, you’d be dumb not attempt run towards it. Note I’m not arguing for a credentialized gate keeping, I personally can’t stand credentialism, but there are a wide variety of people rushing into the field who can make decent money even if they’re not particularly good as long as they’re providing whatever the employer things is business value.

gbronner• 5 years ago

I've been asked to explain the following in c++

[](){}(); This doesn't test your programming skills either

colejohnson66• 5 years ago

I’m gonna hazard a guess and say (based on the brackets at the beginning), it’s something about a lambda with no capture group?

Regardless, what’s the point in asking people how bad practice code works? Why would anyone write a lambda that does absolutely nothing?

deterministic• 5 years ago

It’s a do-nothing lambda expression applied (executed). If it is one of many questions then it does help revealing what you know and don’t know.

Turing_Machine2• 5 years ago

What this would reveal to me is that I know that I have no interest in working for a company that thinks this is a reasonable interview question.

ac42• 5 years ago

During the interview, you find yourself fending for yourself alone, your corporate framework is gone, and you realise how you miss your desk phone, and somewhere out in space a voice you can't hear is hollering: "The secret is banging those rocks together, dude!"

perryizgr82• 5 years ago

I don't believe this observation. I've never met a coworker or a person interviewing at my office who is unable to program these simple examples.

In fact I'm repeatedly amazed at how well people program and think about solutions to problems.

Why Can't Programmers.. Program?

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