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debh

74 karma · joined February 27, 2016

Senior Software Developer working on the Xbox team in Microsoft. Development blog at http://www.acodersjourney.com
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debh··on C++ exception handling mistakes and how to avoid them
Thanks - I'll check it out. I'm thinking to compile a list of good resources and add it to the current article.
debh··on The Quest for a Perfect C++ Interview Question
What you say is true - but the idea is not to use this in production code. It's just a means of testing some fundamental C++ concepts which I outlined in the post.
debh··on The worst programming interview question I've even seen
Nice one :)
debh··on The worst programming interview question I've even seen
Kindof - if you're a startup and hiring for a position that requires knowledge of java, then IMHO it's a fair question. Most startups don't have the resources to train employees for 6 months.

But yes - the testing material in most certifications is not a good indicator of problem solving abilities and I wouldn't make any hiring decision based on them.

debh··on The worst programming interview question I've even seen
In my experience, pure mathematical knowledge just by itself seldom translates into good coding skills. This is after I've TAed Maths, CS and Physics courses for almost 4 years.

Typically we have 45 minutes to interview someone and asking a question where one has to derive a mathematical formula using induction/ calculus is not well served to gauge their programming abilities.

But I totally agree with you on your last point - just because someone is not a good hire now, does not mean they never will be - that's why even if you don't crack an interview, you can reapply in 6 months time.

debh··on Top C++ header file mistakes and how to fix them
Yes - it's mostly applicable when you're creating APIs and developer solutions. But even in case of internal tools/ exes, you might need to share functionality with a internal partner team and it's helpful if they don't have to read code they don't need to use.
debh··on Mistakes to avoid with C++ 11 smart pointers
Thanks for reporting this. Someone else noticed it on a nexus tablet as well. I'm looking into getting this fixed.
debh··on Mistakes to avoid with C++ 11 smart pointers
Good points ! I ran into some difficulty translating the boost::shared_ptrs to C++ 11 standard shared_ptrs a while back while adopting some open source tech for xbox.

Also you're spot on about people touting the smart pointers as a silver bullet for all memory issues leading to an overuse of these otherwise fantastic tools.

debh··on Mistakes to avoid with C++ 11 smart pointers
Yep - thanks for calling this out. I should have put out a version that's safe in multithreaded environment. I've updated the article to reflect this.
debh··on Mistakes to avoid with C++ 11 smart pointers
I think for self referencial data structures, passing them by a const& unique_ptr is a reasonable way to do it.

Thanks, Deb.