mmorett

For you. But you don't get to make that decision for everyone else. Stop trying to impose your value system on others. It's clear you don't like using a mouse. Then don't. Keep using a 1970s keyboard if it suits you. Bon a petite.

Unless things have changed recently, Quora requires users to sign in to simply read a post. The problem with that should be obvious. A user is not there to serve Quora. Quora is (theoretically) there to serve the user.

Users not familiar with Quora (i.e. outside the SV bubble) may not have any idea what Quora is, or what value it provides. Upon stumbling on a link from Google, they click it, are sent to Quora and are immediately asked to create an account. Or maybe Quora will show a portion of the post or a few comments, but you have to establish an account to read more.

Quora is essentially asking to have sex without a first date.

At its core, Quora is (roughly) Stack Overflow: knowledgeable answers to questions, albeit across a broader spectrum of topics. There's good stuff in there. I established an account about a year ago. But when I'm presented with a prompt to log in to simply read something, I don't. And yet I have an account. I simply move on. I can't explain it but it feels offensive, like I'm being gamed.

Stack Overflow and HN provide enormous value to lurkers. I barely comment on things here on HN...but I visit daily. Multiple times a day. Every day.

When I feel the need to comment on HN, I log in. It's actually a pretty simple concept that somehow eludes Quora. One can't help but question why are they so insistent on requiring a user to log in to simply read. Reading is not participating. It is consuming. Imagine requiring a user to login to read a blog post. That's crazy.

There is some motive to requiring a user to login to read. I don't know what it is, but it feels wrong. At the very least, it's not user-friendly. They are discouraging visits and turning people away.

The closest example I can think of to requiring a user to sign in to consume content is Twitter. Somehow it feels different, maybe because Twitter is a microphone for anything you want to say vs. writing up an intelligent answer to a question (or asking a question). Folks can spout out nonsense on Twitter. And part of it is gossip/entertainment. That content won't fly on Quora which desires quality content.

I don't know. That's just one perspective.

You're rarely going to use them...so let's ask a candidate about them.

This analogy is proving more accurate as I read thru the comments.

"Maybe you'll be sitting across the desk from me one day and you'll get to work with an awesome team of talented engineers. Carefully selected."

What an arrogant prick.

"Our job is to stop you getting hired."

So then, by definition, you have perfect employees. Congrats. I'm sure this extends to the perfect sales team, perfect product team, etc. That is impressive.

Agreed. It was too damned long to even begin to dig in. The fact that he keeps posting it (whatever it is), it just wasting space.

My pet peeve is that you are interviewed as though you should be God, and you would be so lucky and privileged to work on this pristine, perfect codebase...only to find out that the codebase is not all that perfect, and the development processes are not scrum or agile or XP, but instead "run around like chicken with your head cut off, just get it done!"

Perhaps this is the queue for someone to suggest "that's why we try so hard to prevent bad people from getting hired". :-)

Let me offer an explanation: maybe the job he was applying for asked for knowledge and experience in Java, Spring, Hibernate, Grails, Javascript, SQL, CSS, writing stored procs with PL/SQL, performance tuning, node.js, and Git...and the binary trees/linked lists portion only pertains to Java (and maybe Javascript?). More specifically, maybe the guy just hasn't had the need, for whatever reason, to use a binary tree or a linked list recently. I doubt he runs around saying "it's April, I haven't used a TreeMap in a while, let me use one now so it's fresh in my mind for next year's interview".

The point I'm trying to make is that some requirements are very, very wide/broad. And then they'll take one piece of that broad pie and decide to go very, very deep.

And then there's the death knell...you spent time developing deep expertise in something no longer actively used. This applies more to frameworks than languages (i.e. Struts, Prototype, Dojo, etc.)

It's a no-win situation all around.

"That you could go away and learn what color the middle wire is is great. But the guy next to you has been fixing wiring in distributor caps for years. And right now, I need people that know what color the middle wire is."

If you're hiring a mechanic, yes. However, the analogy was pointing out that the person being asked the question was a potential car renter. That specific knowledge is not relevant as a car renter.

That's gold. I've been using "clear" this whole time and hated it, particularly since I'm used to "cls" from MS-DOS. So, for me, the way to clear the screen was:

cls <enter> clear<enter>

lol.

I see Cmd + K on the menu now, but I guess I wasn't curious enough to poke around. Thanks a bunch.

"The fact that Emacs and Vim lack features attractive to newcomers tells nothing about their value. Musicians and Craftsmen invest years in learning their tools or instruments."

Those editors have value to folks that have invested time in learning them but they are not intuitive. Using an editor, or any tool actually, should not require memorization. Functionality should be discoverable.

I can't speak for you or your usage pattern, but I don't have the time, nor the capacity, to memorize commands for every program I use. This would include shortcuts for GUI apps. I use a lot of apps and code in a few languages and use more APIs than I care to. I'm spread thin. I'm not a sysadmin type spending all day in vi, or emacs.

For the languages I code in, I don't know all the features in and out. Ditto for the frameworks/APIs I use. Hell, I don't even know all the features of my IDE.

There's too much to know/deal with. For me, personally, I don't want a text editor to be "something that requires knowledge to use". I just need to use it occasionally, and I just need to make a few edits.

Editing a simple text file in vi/vim is excrutiating. Some people code in that thing. lol. Perhaps a hex editor wasn't readily available.

"It certainly takes some time to learn how to do things, macros, search and replace, move blocks of text, install some good plugins, etc... All of this is incredibly fast and ergonomic as opposed to move your right hand to the arrow keys every now and then. "

This explains it so perfectly. The arrow keys are not a penalty. They are 1. clearly labeled, and 2. available on every keyboard. Using them is intuitive. They require no knowledge or memorization.

Yes, I have to move my right hand to them, just as I have to occasionally move my right hand to the mouse and/or trackpad. I am not performing data entry. I am editing a file, often a configuration file of some sort. Speed is not the issue; accuracy of the changes being made are. Even when I'm coding in an IDE, I'm not touch-typing like a 1960s typist. I spend more time thinking/contemplating than typing.

It's not a vi/vim thing. Emacs was just as confusing to me. I'm not proposing or suggesting anything so much as observing how a new, less effective technique of consuming HN was given praise "just because it's done in Terminal". There is a perverse hatred of the GUI or even things considered intuitive in the linux world, which I understand are inherited from the unix world, which is very, very old.

I just don't understand why we can't pay homage to that legacy, but still advance the needle. What the developer did was nice, showed skill, deserves some props, but not useful.

Making a character-based editor that could be used by grandma for the next 20 years in linux would be.

"you mean emacs right?"

Lol. I'm not taking that bait. :-)

FWIW, I had never tried emacs before and decided last week, ironically, to try it for the first time. I fired it up, poked around, tried to do something useful and then wanted to quit. I couldn't find a way to quit the app. As best as I can remember, I don't remember seeing an obvious way to exit so I closed the entire Terminal window. lol

But that same exercise on TextMate was not even close. I was immediately productive in TextMate, having never used it before, and was able to get things done. Even better, I was able to exit "properly" without killing the program.

TextMate required no memorization of any kind. But it also doesn't make one out to be a genius for simply being able to use it. Those archaic command-line editors do. My gf has to use nano because she can't navigate using vi. I use vi (barely), and I can't navigate it either. lol. vi, for me, is like a one night stand...get in and out as fast as possible. I hate using it. But many people swear by it...in 2013. Because ":wq" is so obvious.

I mean this with all sincerity, but did I understand this correctly? Using Terminal to sift thru HN articles, only to open them up in a web browser via the "c" key or the Enter key? I fail see the point. If you have a browser, you don't need the less usable Terminal version.

I tried thinking about who could be the target audience for something like this and had images of 1960s-era IBMers who worked exclusively with character-based terminals hooked to the mainframes (ignore the lack of browsers in that time period for the moment). But today, barring specialized defense related jobs and the like, everyone has a browser. Hell, many of us have browsers in our pockets via smartphones.

I guess I just don't understand the fetish with 1960s-era technologies in 2013 (up to and including vi/vim vs. more powerful editors). Is it nostalgia?

Good post, but one major flaw in the comparison to carpentry:

"It doesn’t matter how many years experience in carpentry you have had or how well you can design furniture or cabinetry if every time you try to cut wood you struggle with making the cuts."

That's not even close to a legitimate comparison.

Cutting wood is a tactical, known activity. You learn how to do it, and you always apply the same known, proper technique.

Problem solving, by definition, means you don't have a stock answer to deal with. You are effectively inventing a solution and drawing on your experience. Worse, you invent a solution each time.

If he wanted to make a more accurate comparison, I would say declaring a variable or writing a for-loop is the equivalent of making a cut. Irrespective of the problem, those are done in standard ways and you just have to know how to do that.

For those wondering/questioning this line of thinking, compare the following:

--turning a bolt --putting an engine together

Those are two very different things. Or,

--cutting wood --constructing a house

Again, two very different things.

And I won't even factor in the idea of knowing how to do something "software developer related" in a few languages and/or a few frameworks.

I was able to use it at the same time I had IDEA 11 up with both using the same project. It was interesting. Every time I'd switch to the other IDE window, each one detected some changes to the project structure and wanted to reload it.

Otherwise, it was very transparent. No pain at all.

These guys are so one dimensional. If it's not an algorithm, they have that deer in headlights look. For all the stupid interview questions they throw at you, they sure make a lot of mistakes thereby begging the question: the puzzle interview questions are indeed a stupid way to hire or they're just not that bright outside of algorithms, ability to solve puzzles notwithstanding.

"However, better layout (ie. more paragraphs) would help."

Yes. I saw that huge block of text after just reading the GigaOM article and just skipped right over it. I came here to see what people thought on the matter, but I wasn't about to invest it all on one post.

Still, downvoting the other guy that mentioned the length of the piece is pretty crappy. "It adds no value to the conversation". Hell it doesn't. His thought was exactly my thought and the cause of my reaction (to skip the War and Peace-length comment).

For a "comment that didn't add value" he sure got a lot of comments.

Add node.js, MongoDB, backbone.js, Redis, neo4j, coffeescript, html5, CSS3, python, django, zend, spring, hibernate, web services, etc.

They want to hire perfection, but are themselves imperfect.

Perhaps it's the laundry list of technologies, frameworks and related technologies associated with a primary language. Some of these expectations are legitimate, but some/many border on postings just shy of "deep expertise in just about everything".

For giggles, I decided to head over to indeed.com and take a random posting for a Java Developer. I only chose one and below is what they are looking for verbatim:

"* BS degree or equivalent in computer science, electrical engineering, or related field is preferred * A minimum of 5-7 years of relevant work experience * Strong knowledge of Java and J2EE related technologies (JVM, JMS, Servlets etc.) * Knowledge and experience with Internet technologies and protocols (e.g. HTML, XML, TCP/IP, HTTP) * Extensive knowledge of creating high availability large volume systems * Solid experience and ability with the use of a dynamic scripting language such as JavaScript, Perl, Ruby or Groovy (we use Groovy) * Experience in OOAD principles and methodologies * Exposure to Hibernate, Spring or other lightweight container * Expertise with more advanced programming environments and concepts highly desired (e.g. J2EE, multi-threaded programming, high availability design etc.) * Wide experience with code control system and build tools (Maven/Ant) * Solid understanding of design patterns (Gang of Four) * Exposure to and desire to work in, a strong team-based environment * Knowledge or exposure to modern Agile methodologies such as SCRUM, TDD and XP * Knowledge and experience with unit testing practices desired * Experience/exposure to Test Driven Development and Simple Design"

Depending on how literal these requirements are to be taken, any one of these can knock you out of the running (you've got solid Java skills under your belt, but due to your specific environment you've got no JMS or no scripting language experience, or you're light on Spring, etc.)

I didn't post another one I found interesting, but it was asking for Ajax/CSS/front end experience.

The only equivalent I can think of is: "Real estate lawyer needed. Must have experience in constitutional, IP, marriage, family and international law. Any experience as it relates to the Geneva Convention considered a plus."

It's a long shot and I'm not trying to be cute, but Shark Tank (and the help the sharks can provide by virtue of their connections/experience) might be worth looking into.

No. Let me repeat that. It's not your money. You are not entitled to someone else's money by virtue of their mere presence in the country.

Want money? Work for it. Save it. Earn it.

> You may not even make the poor richer, but you will make the rich poorer. Good.

"Unneeded, unspent money" is none of your business. It's not your money.