What are you working on? December 2011

jsalvatier

This is the sixth bimonthly 'What are you working On?' thread. Previous threads are here. So here's the question:

What are you working on?

Here are some guidelines:

Focus on projects that you have recently made progress on, not projects that you're thinking about doing but haven't started.
Why this project and not others? Mention reasons why you're doing the project and/or why others should contribute to your project (if applicable).
Talk about your goals for the project.
Any kind of project is fair game: personal improvement, research project, art project, whatever.
Link to your work if it's linkable.

This is the sixth bimonthly 'What are you working On?' thread. Previous threads are here. So here's the question:

What are you working on?

Here are some guidelines:

Focus on projects that you have recently made progress on, not projects that you're thinking about doing but haven't started.
Why this project and not others? Mention reasons why you're doing the project and/or why others should contribute to your project (if applicable).
Talk about your goals for the project.
Any kind of project is fair game: personal improvement, research project, art project, whatever.
Link to your work if it's linkable.

Typical programmers don't remember these things because they're rarely relevant for typical enterprise software development*. If they're specifically important to what you're doing it may make sense to ask about them, but I don't think these kind of questions should be used just as some generalized "programming intelligence test".

* DB normalization is more likely to be relevant than algorithms, but often the database already exists.

[algorithms are] rarely relevant for typical enterprise software development

I'm not so certain about that. I've seen a number of cases where people working on classic 'enterprise' systems struggled for a long time trying to solve problems that could have been neatly resolved using something that is considered 'theory' (like a dynamic programming solution, Lamport's vector clocks, or A* search) and after much trial and error ended up coming up with a ad hoc approach that mostly didn't blow up. If it's purely a web frontend to a database, sure, there isn'... (read more)

3novalis15y

I'm only interested in hiring good programmers, rather than typical programmers.

3cousin_it15y

I don't know much about the enterprise world. Which of the following sounds more true to you? a) Enterprise programming requires fewer skills, or a lower level of skills, than other kinds of programming; b) Enterprise programming has a separate skill ladder, and a good enterprise programmer has important skills that are unknown to most non-enterprise programmers.

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What are you working on? December 2011

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What are you working on? December 2011

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