[HN Gopher] Include debugging in the interview process
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       Include debugging in the interview process
        
       Author : gururu
       Score  : 43 points
       Date   : 2022-04-22 17:45 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.zhenghao.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.zhenghao.io)
        
       | rektide wrote:
       | Recent similar-ish sort of article that I quite enjoyed, "How to
       | Freaking Find Great Developers By Having Them Read Code"[1].
       | 
       | I really really appreciate having resourceful people about.
       | People who can go hunt for answers, who can explore questions:
       | they are the ones that make excellent fantastic programmers, and
       | people who are fun to engage with & watch go at it. I very much
       | agree there's a huge weakness in drilling people to see if they
       | can come up with answers, and that this idea of seeing how they
       | navigate & explore things is probably >50% of the real battle in
       | sw dev life.
       | 
       | [1] https://freakingrectangle.wordpress.com/2022/04/15/how-to-
       | fr... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31047409 (993 points,
       | 6 days ago, 542 comments, damnnnnnn!!)
        
         | lytefm wrote:
         | Yup and I'm not sure if adding a debugger to the mix is
         | actually worth it.
         | 
         | Sure, it's closer to the actual day to day work, but a great
         | dev should be able to understand code even without a debugger.
        
           | pdpi wrote:
           | A great dev "should" have more than one tool at their
           | disposal.
           | 
           | I find that "exploratory debugging" (for lack of a better
           | term) is an under appreciated skill -- using the debugger to
           | learn about the code by seeing it in action as part of the
           | ramp up process.
        
       | bspear wrote:
       | Yup, I file this under: ask more questions that reflect what the
       | person would be doing day-to-day
        
         | mynameisnoone wrote:
        
       | dominotw wrote:
       | I bet there are people who are interpreting this as adding
       | _another_ round to their 100 round interview process.
        
       | drewcoo wrote:
       | And in most shops it will be just like the live coding stuff: a
       | series of trivia questions that the sage interviewer will already
       | know, unlike that hideous rube, the interviewee.
        
         | raulb_ wrote:
         | Sadly, very true. Only to make the interviewer feel superior on
         | things they have seen multiple times more than anyone else.
        
       | cjsplat wrote:
       | The Stripe Bug Squash description made me think of this :
       | 
       | https://dilbert.com/strip/2006-05-06
       | 
       | I wonder if Bug Squash fixes get submitted to the proper open
       | source channels. Tha would be fun.
       | 
       | "Thanks for working through that, can you please sign this
       | contributor agreement?"
        
       | pchristensen wrote:
       | Flexport does! It stood out to me when I interviewed here.
        
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