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Idiotic Interview Questions

Interviews questions always seem to be a topic that comes up frequently at a developer peer group I attend and while at work.  In a recent .NET Rocks! podcast, they touched on this topic and brought up the Fizz Buzz Test.  We have all been in interviews where we are given some ridiculous programming question, that is “intended” to show the interviewer your problem solving skills.  Or maybe (I think likely) they ask these questions because they are the stock questions, and everyone asks them.  It’s like asking someone for their strengths and weaknesses.  Do you really think people aren’t… Read More »Idiotic Interview Questions

Agile and Beyond 2013

Jim Benson (@ourfounder), author of Personal Kanban, was the keynote speaker at this years Agile and Beyond conference.  Overall, I had a great time again this year and found the sessions I attended to be very insightful and reaffirmed some of my opinions. One little thought I wanted to share was from Jim Benson’s keynote: Velocity is the single most useless number invented by human beings. Effort points are estimates.  Guesswork.  The velocity metric is a calculation of that guesswork. We took something as inherently variable as an estimate and we gave it an integer value. I thought this was pretty… Read More »Agile and Beyond 2013

Crappy Code Judgement

What’s the first thing most developers say after diving into legacy code? It’s crap.  Giant plate of spaghetti!  What in the world was the person who wrote this thinking? What’s interesting is we ask this question without really trying to answer it.  What were the objective and/or constraints to the person who wrote it? Without knowing this, you are making your judgement on unknowns. Example #1: You have 30 days to complete.  This application is only assumed to be a temporary application. Example #2: You have 30 days to complete, but don’t spend more than 16 hours.  This will be… Read More »Crappy Code Judgement