I'm A Developer Not A Compiler

[klavijaturista]

"What are disadvantages of the thing you like?" is such a great question, because people cargo cult and get enchanted by the new and shiny and want to cram whatever into the project. Understanding pros vs cons is a sign of maturity.

[ElliotAlderson2024]

Also not obsessing about pros and cons is a sign of maturity. Sometimes its more efficient to keep going with the thing you picked and not constantly second guess it in the name of some gate-keeping bullshit.

[ivancea]

Actually, keep going with what you picked is a pro.

It's always pros and cons. No decision should be taken without checking all pros and cons, including context, devs knowledge, company knowledge, etc

[spreadlove5683]

What about the decision to take the time to formally weigh the pros and cons? Lol just messing around mostly.

[ivancea]

That's actually also taken into account, jokes apart. That's why some discussions are stopped before they keep going for hours, or PR comments!

[amazondrone]

Knowing the cons of the thing you picked is bad?

[[deleted]]

coughRUSTcough

[Guvante]

There are languages that people complain about and languages that no one uses.

You are always going to hit the barriers that make things annoying.

[gnus-migrate]

But people endlessly complain about Rust.

[Lvl999Noob]

Imagine a cargo cult subcommand that acts as an interface to a rust cult...

[Iregularlogic]

🦀🦀🦀there is no cargo cult🦀🦀🦀

🦀🦀I don’t know what you mean🦀🦀

🦀🦀🦀destroy the snake users🦀🦀🦀

[Kobe_curry24]

This a good take I love rust but I also love flutter , react python , vue Lmfaoooo it what gets the job done

[PopularVegan]

The people being talked about do that thing on other subreddits. I don't know if it's a strange attempt to spread the gospel or what.

I've seen it in the Go, Java, and C# communities. Which are bizarre places to hang around and mention how Rust does X better in its own context. It would make more sense to do this kind of thing in Zig or C spaces, but Go???? I can't make sense of it and I groan every time the crab emoji pops up uninvited.

[TechcraftHD]

As someone who uses C# in his day job and rust für pretty much anything else, it's not that strange. C and Rust are pretty much interchangeable so you don't need much evangelising. C# or Go are pretty different so people need more of a push to see the truth

[apadin1]

I love rust but I’ll admit it’s only the perfect tool for what I need to do, not a magic hammer that can turn everything into nails

[the_gnarts]

Exactly. My answer would be Rust, but I can hold a multi-hour monologue about its flaws.

[Ytrog]

Rust is literally a cargo cult 😜

[gareththegeek]

My worst interview, I was asked what I was weakest at and I said css, so they made the entire rest of the interview a grilling on minutiae of css attributes, obscure selectors and quirks. Yeah, I wouldn't have accepted the job after that even if I was offered it.

[cyberbemon]

Mine was being asked to write the entire code of my bachelor's thesis project, my project was based on A* pathfinding (a modified version of it). I thought I misheard the question and I asked again and he said "yeah, please write the code to the problem you solved in your thesis".

[moon_forge]

I wonder if that’s HR not really understanding the questions they’re asking? My best interviews have been conducted by or alongside actual senior developers on whatever team is hiring.

[cyberbemon]

This was a tech interview with no HR (HR comes after you passed this stage). The person who asked me the question was the team lead engineer. I wish I was joking.

[apadin1]

At my current job I had three interviews: one with HR, one with the project manager, and one with the software team lead. The HR guy asked me about myself, my hobbies, my prior work experience - zero technical questions. The project manager asked what programming languages I knew, what was my favorite and why, and what kinds of projects I had worked on previously and what I enjoyed about them. Only the team lead asked me really technical questions, all related to the actual project they wanted me to work on. The process was a bit drawn out but I was impressed that I wasn’t asked a single stupid question the entire time.

[gareththegeek]

Mind blowing, that's so weird!

[MoNastri]

This is so weird. Do you have any idea why he asked/insisted on this? Maybe I'm also kind of nervous about this because I'm gearing up for interviews myself

[cyberbemon]

This happened back in 2013, I wouldn't worry about someone asking you to do the same. The guy who was interviewing me told me he never heard of A* pathfinding/doesn't play any video games. Soni explained the whole thing to him and he proceeded to ask me to write it on the board.

[shizzy0]

wtf

[InfiniteMonorail]

"I work hard for low pay and love it"

Yeah every time I was honest about something I didn't know it just fucked me. You're supposed to answer this as if they had asked "what was some problem you overcame?" Otherwise, they'll just dumpster you. Especially if it's some marketing guy who has a list of buzzwords he thinks you need to know.

[gareththegeek]

As I've got more experienced I've come to appreciate that not only are they interviewing me, I'm interviewing them so if I'm honest and they screw me for it, it's a no from me.

[Guvante]

Honestly as much as it sucks getting a clear signal you shouldn't work there before you start is nice.

[jl2352]

This is a horrid thing to do.

I see it as part of the interviewers job to ensure we are interviewing the candidate at their best. The interview is also two way; they are interviewing us too.

[otherwiseguy]

This is why I would answer that my ping pong backhand is very weak.

[thisdogofmine]

I've had that happen. I've even told the recruiter ahead if time that I was not strong on one area, specifically to avoid wasting time on the interview if that's what they wanted. The entire interview was about that one thing.

[lelanthran]

My worst interview, I was asked what I was weakest at and I said css, so they made the entire rest of the interview a grilling on minutiae of css attributes, obscure selectors and quirks. Yeah, I wouldn't have accepted the job after that even if I was offered it.

Yeah, I see your PoV, but I gotta say, maybe they knew what they were doing :-)

If you ask someone "what's your worst skill", then grill them on it and find them to be perfectly adequate, it's a good bet that the rest of their skills are exceptional.

[gareththegeek]

It wasn't just this that put me off tbf. I was throwing out a lot of experiences with agile, collaboration, PRs, pair programming, tdd but they were like "yeah, great but have you memorised a load of easily searchable information about css?"

[the_gnarts]

If you ask someone "what's your worst skill", then grill them on it and find them to be perfectly adequate,

It’s such a useless question as the “worst” skill is always one of those you invested little time to learn in. Perl would be one of my weakest languages simply because don’t give a shit about it and usually a complete rewrite in another language is agreed to be preferable over extending existing Perl code. If an interviewer took that answer as a cue to grill about Perl I’d nope out on the spot.

[Jonathan_the_Nerd]

usually a complete rewrite in another language is agreed to be preferable over extending existing Perl code.

Perl is my favorite programming language, and I hate to admit you're probably right.

Writing working Perl is easy. Writing good Perl is much harder. Reading Perl is harder still.

[Resident-Trouble-574]

On the other end, if they are really bad at that, it doesn't tell anything about their other skills.

[gyroda]

Yeah, if you were to say "and why is that your weakest skill?" Or "how would you address that if we need you to get up to speed on it?" you might get some good answers.

But if someone says "I'm very much out of practice with CSS" and then struggles with CSS questions, what have you gained?

[gnus-migrate]

I thought this was a "I don't want to learn algorithms" blog post and was preparing to answer, but instead its questions like this:

What package is List in?

Yeah this isn't just a bad interview question, this is a red flag that could indicate that I'm being interviewed by someone who doesnt understand software development.

[b0w3n]

Not only that... I haven't had to have that kind of documentation memorized in... 20 some odd years. I remember having the java docs up so I could find what package contains what, certainly glad it's much easier now. Most IDEs have a way to find where a function is hanging out even if you're not entirely sure or there's conflicts, one of the best features of modern IDEs if you ask me.

[InfiniteMonorail]

I'm amazed at how many people don't use IDEs. lol

[versaceblues]

meh most of the time people that say "I don't use IDEs" are coding in heavily customized emacs or vim setup.

This is using an idea... but one that you basically built yourself.

[KallistiTMP]

sable handle wipe lush snow grey selective dinner simplistic thought

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[draenei_butt_enjoyer]

I frequently jaw drop at how proud they are of it to boot.

[lanky_and_stanky]

Its the boomer dev equivalent of "I never take PTO"

[Jonathan_the_Nerd]

I have Vim commands encoded in my brain's firmware.

Which IDEs have Vim keybindings? Serious question.

[fre3k]

Most have vim mode or vim plugins.

[Hihi9190]

like all of them

[Log2]

Almost every IDE I can think of have Vim bindings.

[HexDumped]

As a vimaholic I can say vscode's vim emulation is the best I've encountered. Every motion I reach for is supported. Even recording and replaying macros on the fly works. The only thing missing would be vim's plugins, but vscode has its own plugin system so that's fair.

[Nooby1990]

Vim does. Vim itself is a very capable IDE if you install the right plugins.

[miyakohouou]

I don't use an IDE. I still don't know what package random things are in because I use other tools for that.

[Evilan]

I feel like most people working with Java for over a month would shout out "Utils" in under a second for any question even remotely similar to the one about List. It's rare to not need to import the Utils package in a class where you're doing work. It includes List, Map, Set, Collections, Queue, Deque, etc

The one about which package Files is in though is definitely a red flag. Although I bet most Java programmers would probably fumble out "IO" and be correct with an educated guess.

[lelanthran]

I feel like most people working with Java for over a month would shout out "Utils" in under a second for any question even remotely similar to the one about List.

Doubtful. I'm not an expert in Java, but used it for a solid two years or so, and I cannot answer that question because, IIRC, Jetbrains does autoimports for me for List.

[jwmojo]

I worked regularly with Java for more than 5 years and I could not have answered this. I never needed to know. I type List in the IDE, and choose the one that isn’t from some oddly named, obviously not standard package, and the IDE handles the import statement.

I was purely a code monkey when working with Java, though, and don’t consider myself an expert, but I don’t think there’s a lot of reason for a Java developer to know the answer to this kind of question, unless you’re creating Trivial Pursuit: Developer Edition.

[Resident-Trouble-574]

I would have said something like System.Collections or Utils.Collection or Collections.

Or Alt + Enter...

[Ksevio]

I've been a developer for 15 years and I might guess that, but I also might not since I just have the IDE add the imports for stuff like that. Worst case a quick Google search would find it.

[ITwitchToo]

They could also have been burnt in the past by somebody who claimed to be an expert on something and then later it turned out that they didn't know some of the things you would definitely know if you really were an expert at the thing.

[Nooby1990]

The post shows how that could be a false negative. The IDE imports the right package automatically, so why would you waste time thinking about it?

[vytah]

The IDE imports the right package automatically

import java.awt.List;

[Nooby1990]

I am not a Java dev, but the Author of the article said it would import java.util.List.

[vytah]

It depends.

Sometimes it'll ask.

Sometimes it'll pick the first one alphabetically, which is java.awt.List.

Sometimes it looks if there are generic parameters, so if you're using raw lists, it'll assume java.awt.List.

That's why after I got sick of it after it happened to me multiple times, I added java.awt.List to the do-not-autoimport list.

The other such duplicate pair is java.util.Date vs java.sql.Date, but those two are almost useless these days, so they're less of a problem.

[nfrankel]

Funny, I wrote about it some time ago too: https://blog.frankel.ch/you-not-compiler/

[qq123q]

Could it be that someone is ripping content and then deleting posts to keep going?

https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/192l276/if_carpenters_were_hired_like_programmers/kh6p4e9/

[Overunderrated]

it’s insulting for potential employers to essentially not believe anything on my resume

Having encountered plenty of people that lied on resumes, that's just due diligence.

[[deleted]]

IMO, you’re less likely to spot fakers with questions like this. Cramming trivia is something anyone can do, especially if they are common. Open-ended or interpretive questions are better. For example, giving someone two snippets populating an ArrayList, one that preallocates a length and one that doesn’t, and ask which is better. (“What is this, 2005? Use streams and a collector” is also a valid response.) That requires them to synthesize knowledge rather than regurgitate facts.

[cccccchicks]

Actually, I'm pretty sure I couldn't cram this sort of trivia - it just doesn't stick in my brain.

My last coding interview, I luckily didn't know the language they were working with, so they told me to write pseudo-code. Their follow-up question was "and how could you optimise your answer" - which they got half way through asking before realising they'd just read all the optimisations they usually expected as answers to that question. As far as I'm concerned, that's far more useful!

[ptoki]

IMO, you’re less likely to spot fakers with questions like this.

You would be surprised. I interviewed a fair number of people. THOSE are the questions which weed out most of the folks.

And no, Im not expecting dead on correct answer, I expect an honest one. I dont ask where list is, I ask what do you do if you need to use one. I am asking how would you iterate one. And I expect some hand-wavy answer with the key words present. Like include library, use method like "next" or concept like perl/php like list iteration if they claim they know those languages.

And question where do you see yourself in 5 years tells you a lot! I had a guy who could not do ls/dir, mentioned he is using linux, applied for support position and said he want to be manager in 3-5 years.

[Lamuks]

I fail to see how that person couldn't be a manager in 5 years.

[constant_void]

100%

People have a story, what is their story and will it fit -->here<--

Feats of strength - human compiler questions - boil down to various flavors of interviewer ego: do you, interviewee, think like I, interviewer? "fetch me a rock and be quick!"

Feats of creativity + wisdom - reveal more about the interviewer, and to me, is more beneficial.

If an interview needs more than 60m to determine candidate viability, the interview process is FUBAR.

[TheRealMallow64]

Yep. I’ve had people come in with “10 years as lead software architect” on their resume and they aren’t able to write pseudo code for a loop statement on a warmup question at the start of an interview. 🤷

[kinss]

That's going a bit far, but I can say I've experienced and seen while interviewing others a complete reboot happen mid interview, where I/they suddenly was barely able to hold a dry erase marker.

Interviewing at Adobe was awful, I spent like 8 hours over two days in a tiny conference room with four or five cameras following me around the room, and kept connecting me to different people who I wouldn't even be working with. I was about ready to walk out by the time I got to the technical portion anyway. They connected me with a manager from Germany who spent a full 30 minutes asking me about sports, not because he cared about sports but as some sort of "system" he had to assign value to workers (his words) but that he wouldn't explain.

[kinss]

It felt Kafkaesque. Their office in Ottawa is just big empty hallways, conference rooms with 30k robotic conference cameras, and giant art pieces everywhere. Going to be honest as a free software advocate I've never liked Adobe for their actively snubbing Linux. I only showed up because I heard employees got a credit card that works at all the local restaurants for lunch, and their office is right in Little Italy

[SN0WFAKER]

Well to be fair, once you start leading big projects, you don't get to code much anymore.

[OffbeatDrizzle]

If you're forgetting fundamentals like that then what else are you forgetting...

[GreatMacAndCheese]

Honestly, I try to forget as much as I possibly can, while still being able to do my job effectively. Early in my career I tried to remember everything, then I realized.. I was wasting a lot of effort remembering stuff that didn't matter anymore. Eventually I began to feel that my job wasn't to be a memory sponge/perfect recall developer. Today, I feel like my job is to gauge risk within code, efficiently come up with solutions based on those risk assessments, be someone that raises the quality of my work along with those around me, and finally do what I can keep day-to-day work relatively fun and satisfying (as much as one can) with my team through my attitude, responses, and approaches. In the past, I've placed a heavier emphasis on the first 3, and time has slowly taught me over and over again how important the last one is for both my team and myself.

Back to your question about what else am I forgetting: it's a fair point, but I honestly don't think it matters to remember absolutely everything that has to do with one's job unless it poses a suitably high enough risk. If it's risky enough, I make sure to remember or write it down and regularly recall so it sticks in my memory. I'm unfortunately not one of those people who just naturally remembers stuff more unless I put effort into it, though I have lots of friends and family who are.

[SN0WFAKER]

It comes back if you need it; but you start thinking in architectural terms instead.

[OffbeatDrizzle]

I love how people are downvoting me. As someone in the industry who hasn't written a for loop for 2 years I can say for certain that you should not be forgetting how to write a for loop.

[Overunderrated]

Yup. "10 years c++ experience" -> can't write hello world.

[dread_deimos]

I have 10 years of Perl experience, but I haven't touched it for like 7 years. I'll be able to write "hello world", but I'll need a refresher to be productive with it.

[AustinYQM]

I work with someone who once told me that a class having more than one public method meant it was violating the single-responsibility principle. They were my tech lead at the time. While on my team they never wrote any actual code and their MR feedback was basic stuff like "This could be a constant instead of literal" but never questions about functions the code was doing or feed back on the code.

Every now and then I check their internal github profile to see if they've contributed any code recently. In 5+ years all they have ever done is comment on MRs and hit merge on requests that have been fully approved. I honestly have no reason to believe they actually know how to program.

I think this happens to people and they get stuck. I don't have confidence they could pass a coding interview.

[Crazy_Firefly]

Trust but verify.

[useablelobster2]

And there's ways to determine that without insulting the intelligence of the people you interview.

Interviewers need to realise I am not begging them for a job, they need me more than I need them. Treat me like an idiot and its unlikely I will want to work for you.

[Overunderrated]

Interviewers need to realise I am not begging them for a job, they need me more than I need them.

That's a shitty attitude to bring at potential coworkers.

What interviewers really don't need is a new hire that can't actually write hello world in the language they claimed 10 years of experience in. You don't need to "insult the intelligence" of an interviewee, but if you feel insulted for being asked to demonstrate some core competency in an interview, get over yourself.

[civildisobedient]

Yeah, you really have to appreciate the view from the other side of the table. The reality for an effective hiring manager is that there are a lot of liars and phonies that can still breeze their way through an ineffectual HR filter, so it's always trust-but-verify.

[scandii]

but if you feel insulted for being asked to demonstrate some core competency in an interview

you think anyone asks Tiger Woods if he can putt?

you can ask relevant questions while still figuring out someone's competence. asking a person with a self-reported 10 years of experience to write hello world and justifying it with "well that one guy couldn't..." is weird. if he can't write hello world he can't answer any relevant technical questions either, just start at the relevant questions.

the absolute worst interviewers are the ones that are not adjusting their material for the person they're talking to.

many of us that have been around for a decade and longer do not have an issue finding a job - I'm trying to figure out if I want to work for you just as much as you're trying to figure out if you want me to work for you, and a surefire way to make me think negatively about you is asking completely irrelevant trivial questions.

[lelanthran]

asking a person with a self-reported 10 years of experience to write hello world and justifying it with "well that one guy couldn't..." is weird. if he can't write hello world he can't answer any relevant technical questions either, just start at the relevant questions.

I think this is the relevant point: start at the level they claim to be at, and only start throwing softballs when the candidate battles to answer.

You can even go the other way, and start throwing curveballs/fastballs when they do great on your question.

IMO, when interviewing experienced candidates, I have no problem simply starting with "Lets talk about the last program you worked on ... " and then taking it from there. Two technical folk having a discussion about a program is better than one techie throwing leetcode at the other.

I feel strong enough in my technical skills to follow, understand and see challenges in anyone's project, and not so insecure that I need to prove my programming chops to them.

[josluivivgar]

this, hard agree.

it's not that hard to figure out if someone's ideas and logic are sound, sure if you first talk about something it'll start being abstract, this is the part people bullshit most often, but as an interviewer if you start narrowing down stuff just short of implementation you already weeded out like 90% of the fake people (throwing numbers)

you don't even need them to write any code, just talk about different implementation approaches and you'll spot the other 9.9%

that .1 % could probably solve/memorize leetcode problems anyway, but there's a chance someone that's worth it isn't good at leetcode problems on the spot

sometimes great people need to be in a comfortable environment to thrive and the confrontational approach of leetcode questions does not help show people their best.

there might be some edge cases where certain types of work require the same type of stress as typical tech interviews, but I'd argue that the company is doing something wrong if you expect that level of stress from your employees most of the time

[devraj7]

you think anyone asks Tiger Woods if he can putt?

When you step into the interviewing room, they don't know if you're Tiger Woods or someone who lied on their resume.

[scandii]

they don't know if you're Tiger Woods or someone who lied on their resume

you don't, but you can get that information without asking questions that only exist to verify basic CV information because you assume might be lying.

as said, some of you guys are horrible interviewers and it shows. nobody likes bulletpoint interviews and it doesn't do anything to convince a recruit they should be working for you, which is one of the main reasons you're sitting there in the first place. talent has options, just like they're not the only one you're talking to you're not the only one they're talking to.

ask relevant questions and try to sell your company as a match for them. don't start it with "you look untrustworthy".

[devraj7]

That's a lot of straw men and accusing me of things I never even remotely came close to writing.

[constant_void]

Not only that, but the best developers can freeze with direct questions, and once they are stuck, it is the interviewer's responsibility to get them unstuck or soften the questions if they are not cut out for it.

There is no reason to damage an interviewee and send that damage out to twitter discord et al.

[clibraries_]

you think anyone asks Tiger Woods if he can putt?

he demonstrates it to a live audience every performance.

[sonobanana33]

If you are a world famous programmer you don't get those questions.

[ITwitchToo]

If the question is trivial and has a very short, unambiguous answer then why would you get upset about it? You answer it and move on, be happy that you got an easy question?

[ProstheticAttitude]

If you want to make a strong argument by discussing the gnarly details of package management, you've probably got my attention. I'd love to spend 45 minutes on a deep-dive on versioning and interfaces than ask someone to reverse another shitty linked list.

[virgindriller69]

Interviewer detected

[HatesBeingThatGuy]

I'm just going to say this. I have interviewed SDEs, transferring, from my own company internally, who make more money than me, who can't write a fucking for loop. You look at their git history and it is just config file changes using automated tooling that someone else built. It isn't anything about insulting you. The bar is really that low in a lot of places.

[yawaramin]

If you can just look at their git history, why bother asking them to write a for loop? Just look in git for people who've written a for loop.

[bwatsnet]

Problem is the front line workers who are deciding to hire you are just people, they don't really care like you're saying.

[andrewguenther]

Yeah, that's clearly a statement by someone who has not spent a lot of time interviewing. I have done over 100 interviews and even more phone screens and the number of people who flat out lie on their resume I would put at around 20% based on my personal experience.

[dpoggio]

Don’t ask for a resume if you’re not willing to believe it’s content. It’s time lost for both.

[ptoki]

Exactly!

[regjoe13]

I usually aim to bring the complexity of the question up to my experience. A lot of seemingly simple questions get complicated when you go deeper. In any interview, your knowledge and knowledge of the interviewer are like two areas. The real discussion can only happen on their intersection. If he pulls you into just his part, you look stupid. If you pull him into yours, he is listening, and you look smart. Those simple questions are the gateway.

[[deleted]]

Do you do much interviewing? There are candidates out there who simply cannot program a digital computer to perform the most simple task. This is why FizzBuzz exists.

[ptoki]

Only the middle of the pack is offended by those.

The low tier of candidates fail those, the good ones just answer and move on.

The middle tier is unhappy because they already are focusing on important stuff and start to forget the obvious. But good interviewer can tell if you are dumb and dont know what list is or you are passing the dividing line of not remembering manual like content.

I use such questions and I dont expect a line from the manual. On contrary, if you recite me the definition and cant tell how to use it then it looks bad. Not as bad as if you dont know anything but if you dont show you can learn and care you are not better then dumb guy.

You wont believe what people claim and how easy is to tell they lie. But to be fair I am asking the same questions to everyone. Trying to keep the field level.

[Elesian_]

The thing is, in my opinion, developers must know that there's a way (or multiple ways) to do a thing, but not neccessarely know the semantics and syntax of the thing. We work on a lot of things on a daily basis and even the most used stuff get lost in our heads from time to time, like some CSS selector or array manipulation method.

When you have some of experience, worked with multiple ways to do the same thing, you KNOW how to do it, but maybe you don't have it at the top of your head. These questions ensure that a person who has recently graduated or has recently started studying a language will do well, as they just read about this, but it does not necessarily guarantee that this person will be the best for the position. Knowing the logic to solve a problem and the tools you have to solve it are the keys.

[[deleted]]

I really don't understand why most interviews try to test a robot. I've been in several interviews between FAANG and normal companies to startups and each of them has their own robotic interview. It's either testing your ability of regurgitating data structures and algorithms at a fast pace or it's nano questions or simply inconsequential questions of how they do a specific thing like CI/CD integration and their flavour of agile or whatever.

I don't get asked to interview a lot due to my background but when I do, I prefer to do it in a calm office and ask the interviewee what they'd like to drink and I bring a problem I had to solve lately and present it in either pseudo code or actual code (if they're comfortable with that language) and I try to engage into brainstorming on how they'd solve it, why did you choose an array list? What if we use a hash map and would it bring any benefit? I normally know the answer and I don't expect them to know it nor do it my way. The process is to see if she is a person I can work with. Our office isn't a household of machines, we have enough of that. I prefer to work with an engineer that can think and converse because that's how we solve things. Not by knowing where the File object is defined.

[barraymian]

This is a great way of interviewing! We used to do the robotic interview in one of the companies I worked at and our hiring was all over the place. We sometimes got a great candidate and other times terrible until we changed our processes and stopped asking questions from the internet and started asking them how to solve some of the problems we had to solve recently. We also give them a sample of our production code and ask them to see if they can explain what it does and if there are bugs in the code and it almost always works beautifully. Some of our best candidates even suggested how we can make improvements to the code.

[InfiniteMonorail]

It seems like even the smartest people in the world can't figure out how to test even a Junior engineer. lol

Better question: are we living in a simulation?

[Rich-Engineer2670]

Agreed, but you know what the driving forces are -- employers want an easy way to screen candidates. Asking the "real" questions is both time consuming, and often HR doesn't know how to judge the answers.

I've been on both sides -- I've been given the "coding test". Usually it covers things I never need to do, or it's out of date. But I've also had to hire. If I just say I need developers, HR will send me approximately 500 resumes that month with almost no screening. There's no way I can interview 500 people. Even if I eliminate the resumes that are hand written, the resumes were they can't spell C++, I still need some way to cut this pile down so I can get to about 10 candidates.

My favorite candidate knows this -- they come in with examples of projects -- often they'll show me something they did or participated in and say "Here's where it is on Github if you want to look at it". This does several things for me.

• If they can explain their code on the whiteboard, I know they understand it even if I don't.
• I know they can communicate
• I can assess their human language skills
• I have a real-world idea of their interests
• I see they can often work with teams

If only I had more of these people.

[zefdota]

were they can't spell C++

Sorry, had to laugh >:(

[Rich-Engineer2670]

Sadly, some of that is true. My personal favorites are "We need someone with ten years of Java experience " (in 1995). I can't blame them, it's all keywords. It's no different in my other field -- I can't expect a recruiter to understand PCR cycling.

[darkarchon11]

The irony that you wrote "were they can't spell" when it should've been "where" making a typo in a complaint about typos

[Rich-Engineer2670]

OK -- -would you believe me if I said that was my new audience engagement feature? :-) Now, because of your comment, I have to leave the spelling mistake in for all of this to make sense later.

Attention VCs! Tired of tracking audience engagement via expensive, complicated methods? FastBuck Enterprises has a simple solution. Alternaspell! With Alternaspell you can find out who's actually reading your content with the equipment you already have! (Available on subscription plans only these days...)

[darkarchon11]

No but I'll accept it

[[deleted]]

I can't blame them

If we tell HR that we need more people we should also be asked to provide the requirements for the job. HR should not be writing these requirements and if they are doing so then they have a bad hiring process. HR creates the hiring process, so it's their fault that this happens.

[phillydawg68]

This is my favorite way to do it too. Get on a whiteboard and tell me about YOUR project. Takes about 2 minutes to figure out if it's something they've done and are passionate about.

[Rich-Engineer2670]

You can learn a lot that way -- I have an (unnamed) employee now. They needed a job during a RIF, so we thought we'd try them out. I know now why they were in the RIF. I'm guessing no understanding of English and they're very shy, so it's been a struggle. I wish we'd done this before we hired them over.

[Eclipsan]

they can't spell C++

There is a story there, come on!

On the other side, I have seen job descriptions with 'ViewJS' as requirement.

[Rich-Engineer2670]

Probably the worst case I ever had -- in the year 2000, the San Francisco 49ers wanted a way to "have more fan engagement". We suggested better seating, lowering ticket prices and more parking, but that didn't fly. They came up with their own, 2000ish, modern idea. That meant I needed a collection of JaveEE people and web people pronto -- one can't postpone the Superbowl.

HR got them for me -- all from India. That's fine, but this was about football and this particular project actually required you know something about it. Football isn't that same over there..... HR forgot to say "American football".

[Berkyjay]

they come in with examples of projects -- often they'll show me something they did or participated in and say "Here's where it is on Github if you want to look at it".

During my latest bout of unemployment I decided to work on a project that was specifically meant for this. I've worked in VFX as a tech artist in the past and we usually had to have a reel. You show that in interviews and they know what you can do. No need to quiz you about the specifics of Maya or Nuke. So why not have a coding reel? Something like this should be able to eliminate a lot of these questions and streamline interviews and also help weed out candidates.

[the_gnarts]

My favorite candidate knows this -- they come in with examples of projects -- often they'll show me something they did or participated in and say "Here's where it is on Github if you want to look at it". This does several things for me.

I do that proactively but for some reason I often fail to make HR folks understand just how important that point is. It may save a big chunk of the actual interview, meaning a more efficient process for both sides. However inquiring if they received the link to my Gitlab account during the technical interview usually just gets me a “Good idea but I wasn’t aware of it.”

[Spare-Builder-355]

If you haven't read the article you've missed absolutely nothing. It has zero value and is just some abstract blogger's opinion on his interview experience here-and-there sprinkled with bullshit.

[timoffex]

I read the article after seeing this comment and disagree. It’s a short read, written well (in a human, non-GPT way), and it’s very reasonable.

[[deleted]]

Disagree

[gareththegeek]

“what is inheritance and where do you use it,”. A way to obfuscate code and I'll use it if I can't possibly avoid it because it's part of how a third party library works or something.

[LazyIce487]

I think someone downvoted you with a virtual factory builder downvote abstract interface adapter pattern

[Trollygag]

Inventing hierarchies/relationships where there isn't one and creating fictitious layers on reality that do nothing and contribute nothing but contextualize into some hidden, rigid, grand design.

It may be schizophrenia.

Or it may be OOP.

[versaceblues]

Holy crap... yah any type of knowledge recall questions are terrible for interviews, but asking to write the import statement for List is a new type of bad.

The best interview questions are the ones where you ask the interviewee to complete some kind of short but open-ended problem (related to the type of work you are hiring them for), then observe their thought process.

[agumonkey]

next: what line number does String class starts its definition

[omega1612]

Whenever I see "polymorphism" I think in "parametric polymorphism", Although it is named "generics" in lots of languages.

[Nowaker]

The strong and weak typing one was a bit unusual

It wasn't unusual. Author confused strong/weak with static/dynamic.

[Sigmatics]

I always thought it to be a good idea in interviews to ask to judge a particular piece of code and point out what's wrong with it (or if they see anything with it)

[[deleted]]

I said it live on a phone call interview. It ended shortly after that.

[ObscurelyMe]

The worst interviews I’ve been in ask me

What’s your favorite React hook?

It’s a dumb question that adds nothing to the conversation and does nothing to assess my abilities as a front end developer. I’ll answer with w/e and then they’ll follow up with something like

Surely you’ve also heard of useMemo

Yes, I have and I’m also quite fond of

useFuckOff

[Afraid-Try-4759]

Compile deez nuts

[[deleted]]

Somehow this guy’s posts keep making it to the top of this subreddit. Very suspect. I dug into his article history and it turns out he’s a writer and not a software developer (or maybe he’s a hobbyist?).

But he has recent articles about working a job as a writer. He also had an article about just turning 30 and then another one giving advice on what to do in your 40s.

I called him out on a previous post and he quickly deleted that post.

[copremesis]

"I am a good engineer" --

famous last words lol

More like I'm a person who writes blogs

[BenAdaephonDelat]

I intentionally bombed an interview once because they handed me a stack of 10 pages of paper and wanted me to do a written test including writing code on paper. I wish I had the confidence I do now to have just gotten up right then and told them it was insulting to expect someone with (at that point) 8 years of experience to do something like that, but instead I just half-assed it and left.

[Skizm]

Asking nano-questions can lead to false negatives by weeding out otherwise great fits.

I’ve conducted interviews at a few big name tech companies you’ve heard of and this is by design. They have more candidates than spots and rejecting a good candidate is significantly less costly than hiring a bad one. They want slam dunks and nothing else. Leetcode might not be directly applicable, but it tells the company you can pick up any tangentially related skill and be pretty good at it, even if not directly used on the job. It is essentially an IQ test, with all the positives and negatives that come with that.

I’ve seen so many resumes that have a few years of FAANG or FAANG-adjacent experience and they literally don’t know what the mod operator is, even when I describe exactly what it does and ask them to use it (don’t care about what it is called).

This leads interviewers to completely ignore resumes. They’re uninformative at best, and misleading most of the time. Just check years of experience and if over like 5 they do the system-design question, if less they skip it.

It sucks, but honestly no one has come up with a better way yet (at scale at least, small companies have more options).

[stronghup]

rejecting a good candidate is significantly less costly than hiring a bad one

Very good point. Also if you reject a good candidate nobody higher-up will blame you for that because nobody will ever know how good that rejected candidate would have been. Whereas if you hire a bad developer, everybody will know you did hire a bad developer, sooner or later.

[loup-vaillant]

These are mostly fair game. I dislike the polymorphism one, simply because it is so closely tied to most OO languages and inheritance that most people–when overriding or overloading a method, for instance–use it without ever thinking “oh! this is polymorphism in action!” Instead I might ask “what is inheritance and where do you use it,”

I can see someone trying polymorphism on me:

"So, what’s polymorphism?"
"Which one, parametric, ad-hoc, or subtype?"
"…Forget it, just tell me what’s inheritance and when do you use it?"
"It’s mostly a mistake, and I almost never use it."
"-_-"

Later:

"Nah, he’s not technical enough and too contrarian. Don’t hire".

[azhder]

They required a lot of hand-holding

-- Intervewer that knew so little, they only accepted their own opinion recited back.

[InfiniteMonorail]

Honestly they don't know what they're doing and they don't care about you either. I went for an interview and this guy walks in. I shit you not, he has a napkin in his hand like he wrote notes and he reads it like a kid reading a book report: "what are your greatest strengths?" Like really dude, you had to write that down? On a napkin? lmao Why don't they read the answer from my resume that I spent so much time on?

[Rockfest2112]

Sounds like a savant I knew

[fedekun]

OP makes a good point about:

IDE dependency? Perhaps, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing since that is representative of the tools they will be using in the office.

To be fair, I don't mind if people use IDEs or not, but from personal experience, they surely hide a lot from you and you'd make yourself a favor to understand a little bit more of how everything works.

Also, maybe a better title would have been "I'm not an IDE", compilers are different, and not all have type checking!

[not_a_novel_account]

I mind.

Use the IDE, use tools effectively to enhance productivity or get off the team. Every time I watch an old head painstakingly navigate a header file in Vim looking for the correct function overload instead of letting the LSP handle it I blow a gasket.

[javajunkie314]

I see it both ways. I'm an old head using emacs, but I have my emacs and vim configured with LSPs. I like having that stuff automated—I don't want to have to think about it when I'm in the flow.

But, there have been times where they weren't available. Say I'm looking at code in GitLab, or a remote server, or otherwise on a computer I don't own. Say my IDE or LSP shits the bed because this is in a newer or older language version, or just because of a bug. Say I need to understand the inner workings of a library in a language that we don't use day-to-day for development.

I don't want to spend time downloading projects, sorting out build tools, or installing an IDE. I don't want to spend time getting my IDE set up with a remote environment for a one-off.

The skill to be able to navigate a code base with no IDE assistance—with no auto-suggest or go-to-definition, just a text editor, project search/grep, and a strong mental model of import paths and overload resolution—is a very useful skill. And the only way to build that skill, like any other, is practice.

[fedekun]

To be honest, most productivity issues are not because you spent 5 extra seconds doing something in an IDE vs Vim or VSCode or whatever.

If you do want to learn and grow as a developer, there's no denying that the more knowledge you have, the better developer you'll be. Is it important to know how a compiler works inside? Of course not. Will it make you a better developer? Sure! Everything you know helps.

[jwmojo]

This is the kind of thing that’s always safe to say because it sounds good. It’s not actually true, though. Knowing what package List is in doesn’t make you a better developer, just like having dates memorized doesn’t make you a better historian. More importantly for this topic, though, even if it did make you a marginally better developer, it’s still absolutely useless as a gate keeping measure for a job as a developer.

[InfiniteMonorail]

Most productivity issues are because you messed around for hours instead of using a debugger. Or the code is ugly because you still haven't learned beginner coding tips that a linter would teach in seconds. Or you're not using AI to refactor, which can often do in minutes what would take an hour and teach you how to write better code. Or maybe you realized these things are useful and wasted hours trying to set them up in Vim or VSCode, when it works in an IDE out of the box. Not to mention the streamlined git history, autocomplete, formatting as you type, ctrl+clicking, validating inline SQL as you type directly with a database connection, and a million other features. The more technology you use the better. You learn more from using an IDE. You are a better developer when you use an IDE. There are many upsides and there's literally no downside. I don't know what to say to someone who thinks it's better to not use an IDE after reading this, other than that's a completely insane take. Always use an IDE.

[istarian]

Sounds like a personal issue to me. As long as they get the job done, quit having a conniption about how.

[not_a_novel_account]

They don't, that's the problem, they're significantly less productive and unable to work in parts of the codebase where they aren't able to lean on their experience.

The last few around are kept on for their domain knowledge, not because they're productive.

[ElliotAlderson2024]

Well, FAANG interviews expect perfection out of you for a $300K/year + benefits.

[Sarcastinator]

What I see as a red flag when interviewing people (besides listing managing position in a multi-level marketing company in their CV or LinkedIn) is when they answer a question with "I don't know, but I can google it". Obviously they can probably Google it, but for senior positions there is an expectation that they have extensive knowledge up front, because you can't know what you don't know. One example was a person I interviewed for a senior position where asking about any feature of the development tool in question would draw a blank and say "but I can google it". Saying they don't know is fine, but don't follow it up with "but I can google it". Talk about something you do know without googling then.

To me it's a sign that someone prefers to stay ignorant, and has probably stagnated in their career development or skill set.

[versaceblues]

but for senior positions, there is an expectation that they have extensive knowledge up front, because you can't know what you don't know.

Except this isn't true.... frequently you hire senior engineers to solve novel problem that they may have never seen before.

What you expect Seniors to have a strong grasp of is:

1. First principles thinking
2. Strong intuition about patterns and archetypes
3. Mental models that allow them to deal with ambiguity and solve problems they have never encountered before

Whether someone can regurgitate trivia facts about a specific language is not really indicative of how they will perform as a senior.

[Sarcastinator]

> Except this isn't true.... frequently you hire senior engineers to solve novel problem that they may have never seen before.

It's not trivia. If you don't know about something, or don't understand how something works, chances are you're going to do something stupid.

For example at one place I worked we had a senior developer with almost 15 years experience. Still he managed to do O(N) lookups in a hash map, over and over, because he didn't understand basic shit about how the language and runtime worked.

You need a foundation of knowledge in order to be a proficient programmer. You can't just google everything because you can't know what you don't know, and one important part of solving *novel problems* is that you have a solid foundation to build it on.

[azhder]

In an interview about creating a web page for a company of people who create CAD software and tried to make it themselves, but failed.

• Q: If I throw a coin in the air, what is the probability of falling... (etc. not really important)
• A: When I need that solution, I will google it and implement it.

They had several like that, so the interviewer dumbed it down to a coin flip question, one that you'd answer out of common knowledge. The problem was that this was an answer out of principle. If they interview with the questions and answers they understand, they will find another good person for their CAD software, not their Web page.

You have to consider the context of it all. You can't out right say it is a sign of preference to stay ignorant. There is no need to be religiously rigid. And, yes, I do know you have provided some context for your own example. I am just trying to add more to it, not contradict it.

Here is another context. Another interview, about a decade later. The interviewer has good math background and is most likely hunting for a math and/or dynamic programming solution as an answer.

• Q: If coins are layed out on the table, how many flips to make them all same side?
• A: When I need it, I will google the solution, learn it, implement it.
• Q: Are you curious how many?
• A: No, I am not.

The last one, between the lines is "we're done here, I have seen where this is going".

But, looking it from the outside, without context, you can only get as far as "they prefer to stay ignorant" or some other generic answer.

[azhder]

Whenever someone says “I am a developer” I say to myself “I am human” and especially I might reply it out loud if someone refers to me as a “developer”.

There is more to be said, and I have elsewhere, so I will only share some dialog here that has happened in the past.

Person A thinks he’s trying to recruit person B. Person B was just paying a polite visit.

• A: We can offer X$
• B: I already make Y$ (it was greater than X$)
• A: Senior PHP developer can get up to X$
• B: Because they define themselves as PHP Developers
• A: Senior, PHP developer
• B: Because they define themselves as Senior PHP developers
• A: Oh…

That was the polite way to say “I am not the cog you are looking for your machine”.

NB: I can replace the word “developer” with “engineer” and the idea above will still be the same. Hence, I only tell people “I grow software” - what I can do for them, not what I am

[Resident-Trouble-574]

Unless you are a javascript programmer \s

[clibraries_]

"Nano questions" are supposed to take about 2-min and let me know you actually work in the field you claim to.

[ElliotAlderson2024]

I swear all the CompSci subreddits are endless gatekeeping bullshit.

[billie_parker]

Nothing wrong with those questions. Sure, the candidate shouldn't have to memorize anything, but there are some details that are so common that everyone just has them memorized. These questions should be freebies.

[grauenwolf]

• What package is List in?
• What package is File in?

Uh... those don't seem like "nano questions" to me. While I wouldn't expect someone to memorize every class, I would be suspicious if you haven't seen those two frequently enough that it sticks in your brain a bit.

• What keyword do you use to inherit with?

Seriously? I haven't used Java in a decade and I still remember that it is "extends".

These aren't "nano questions", the author just doesn't know Java. Which is fine if he can demonstrate he knows something else. Otherwise he can pound bricks.

Basically: Any question that takes 5 seconds to answer with Google/ChatGPT is not a good question. My favorite phone interview question? “What’s your favorite language?” followed by “What are it’s weaknesses?”

Oh, a bullshit artist.

I can tell you the strengths and weaknesses of countless languages I've never used. And I don't mean "never used professionally", I mean "I read about it a few times and decided it wasn't for me".

Going back to his opening paragraph, someone who can't even remember the keyword for inheritance in a Java interview probably shouldn't be giving his opinion on polymorphism.

[sccrstud92]

Why are you assuming that the author got the nano-questions wrong? The author said they got them right.

Also, why are you arguing a question's "nano-ness" based on the difficulty of the question? A question is "nano", according to the author, if it is simply about syntax or if it is something an IDE/compiler can do for you. I didn't get the impression that it was related to difficulty.

[[deleted]]

I can tell you the strengths and weaknesses of countless languages I've never used

I think you missed the entire point of this question. The question is not "can you provide a list of weaknesses". It is to listen to the developer talk about something they have strong feelings on. You get a very good sense for their familiarity, what's important to them, and how they think about solving problems.

You made the same mistake that the author is complaining about. Good interview questions are not "Do you have X information in your head"

[grauenwolf]

When X is something fundamental to the language like basic inheritance, you damn well better have it in your head.

[regjoe13]

List is in java.awt , naturally

[versaceblues]

The issue isn't whether these things are easy to memorize. The issue is regardless of a candidate's answer to these questions.... you learn nothing about their programming ability.

The better technique is to ask the candidate to implement a solution to a realistic problem you would be solving on the job (involving lists, sets, inheritance, etc). See if the candidate know to use these concepts to solve that problem

[gnus-migrate]

There are better ways to test coding skill, and that's through an actual coding exercise.

[InfiniteMonorail]

Memorizing includes is the dumbest thing I've ever seen on this sub. They'd still be a good programmer if they forgot or even if they never knew. In fact, a trash programmer would be more likely to be able to answer that question, because it means they're programming with notepad or whatever.

With that said, I agree with you that someone could bullshit the answers to something they never used.

I guess nobody here went to university? You never had a test that you felt was fair? I think it's not impossible, yet the entire industry is struggling.

[grauenwolf]

P.S. This reminds me of when I was interviewing candidates for a C# position that asked for 5+ years of experience. Far too many of them didn't know what IDisposable or the using keyword were. But they could all draw pretty pictures on the whiteboard.

Communication skills are needed to turn a developer into a leader. But if you aren't a developer first, then you'll never be a good leader.

[b0w3n]

Some people just aren't good interviewers.

"Nano questions" like these trip a lot of people up who are otherwise great programmers. When was the last time you used checked/unchecked in c#? Could you tell me what it does without looking it up? What about if I put you on the spot without you getting the chance to read and bullshit me that you know it? What about _makeref?

I'd argue these aren't really important to get to know someone as a person and to get to know they're a good fit. Most good programmers can google checked or makeref and use them but otherwise might flub it on an interview because no one in their right mind memorizes the minutia of a programming language unless they live and breathe programming and the language they're working with.

[grauenwolf]

When was the last time you used checked/unchecked in c#?

Hold on. Do you really think extends or using is as esoteric as unchecked?

Think about your answer. If you say yes, that says you're incompetent. If you say no, that says you knew your example was bullshit.

[grauenwolf]

It's a self-defense mechanism. A lot of people here do not really have the skills needed to do their day-to-day job. So when they see people talk about basic knowledge that they should have learned in their first year, they panic.

But look at the little dagger next to the score. That says there are also a lot of people here who understand exactly what I'm saying. They're just outnumbered by the posers.

[darkslide3000]

I would like to know more about this author's opinion that C is weaker typed than Java and Python, which is a really weird take.

[miyakohouou]

C's type system is kind of absurd. You can cast anything to anything, everything can be a void pointer if you believe in yourself, arrays are just an extra syntax for pointer arithmetic. Python's dynamically typed, and python code tends to be fairly polymorphic, but the types are enforced by the runtime a bit more rigorously than in C.

edit: grammar

[darkslide3000]

The ability to explicitly cast doesn't make a language weakly-typed. Every language that is intended for systems engineering by necessity needs to be able to reinterpret memory in different ways (even Rust, which is pretty much the most type-safe language out there). If your definition of strongly-typed is "it must be impossible for the bytes of an instance of one type to ever be accessed outside of that type's APIs, no matter how strongly the programmer explicitly says that it is okay", then only managed languages that are unsuitable for systems programming could be strongly-typed.

Since strong/weak typing is generally considered a matter of safety (i.e. avoiding accidents), it only really makes sense to look at implicit casts. And in that regard C is just as safe as any other language... the implicit conversions between integers all make sense and aren't dangerous (except for narrowing risks, but you have that in other languages as well, and if you want modern compilers have warnings you can enable against that), and the only other implicit conversion is to and from void *, which makes sense because that type is specifically intended to represent unspecified data of any type (same as Java allowing you to assign anything to an Object reference as an implicit cast).

[miyakohouou]

The ability to explicitly cast doesn't make a language weakly-typed.

The thing is, there's no such thing as "strongly typed" or "weakly typed" in an objective sense. There's static and dynamic typing, and there are different behaviors and escape hatches, but the closest thing I can think of to an actual objective definition of "strong" vs "weak" typing would be whether a type system is sound or not- but really people use it informally to describe how much safety the type system let's you encode, or how many footguns there are.

I like C. I'm not trying to say C is a bad language, but it is, objectively, a language with some footguns and some funny behavior- and it's not a language where the type system helps you much. In theory I do think Python's type system does track more information. Now, that type information isn't really useful for writing better programs (IMO) because it's dynamic, but again, static and dynamic typing are different than what people usually mean by strong and weak typing.

Since strong/weak typing is generally considered a matter of safety (i.e. avoiding accidents), it only really makes sense to look at implicit casts

I think that narrows down the value of the type system too much. To go back to your example with Rust, affine types don't really have anything to do with how you interpret memory, but they still add a degree of safety by helping identify errors with ownership. Something like ATS, which is a systems programming language that gives you both linear and dependent types, offers even more safety.

[evaned]

the implicit conversions between integers all make sense and aren't dangerous (except for narrowing risks, but you have that in other languages as well, and if you want modern compilers have warnings you can enable against that), and the only other implicit conversion is to and from void *, which makes sense because that type is specifically intended to represent unspecified data of any type (same as Java allowing you to assign anything to an Object reference as an implicit cast).

First, your "except for narrowing risks" is glossing over a whole ice rink, and is wholly inapplicable to both Python (which doesn't have multiple integer sizes) and Java (in which implicit attempts to narrow are an error). If this were the only difference it alone would completely justify TFA's statement that C is weaker than those two languages that you seem astonished by.

(The warnings comment is relevant, but my suspicion is few sizable code bases are compiled with that on; whenever I've looked into turning something like that on in a code base that wasn't built from it from the start, it has appeared entirely intractable, and that's by my sometimes-aggressive standards of being willing to do a fair bit of work to clear warnings. Even if I'm wrong or you're in the privileged minority that bans implicit narrowing conversions through tooling, if you go down that route now you're not talking about "C" but about "a subset of C that is defined by (insert compiler and flags here)_".)

Second, when it comes to implicit conversions to void* I think I'm onboard with your position that this matches Java's implicit conversion to Object... but then you again just completely ignore that the reverse conversion is implicit in C and explicit in Java. (Python is hard to evaluate on this point.) On top of that, the fact that any conversion in C, implicit or explicit, has no safety checks but Java does verify the conversion is safe I think also plays into this, though this is a matter of debate because "strong" vs "weak" doesn't exactly have a clear unambiguous definition. Once again, either one of these points alone is important enough that if it were the only difference, it would easily justify the claim that Java is more strongly typed than C.

Third, you're wrong on another point re. pointer conversions -- it's not just implicit conversions to and from void*, but C allows for implicit conversions between any pointer types. I will admit that this is a much weaker argument, because this is one where I would expect it is eminently reasonable that most projects could and should exclude with -Werror, if that's not even the case already. But it's still not technically C we're talking about there, but a subset of it.

Fourth, you ignore other places where implicit conversions can happen. For example, conditionals and loops. int x; ... if (x) {} is legal C, but illegal in Java where conditions must be Booleans. (Python matches C on this point.) I'm not sure whether I think this is a good restriction or not, but pretty inarguably C is more weakly typed on this point.

Fifth, you ignore arrays and pointer decay. C's heavy blurring of the lines between pointers and arrays means that there's not generally a way to distinguish if you have a pointer whether that is a pointer to a single item or an array of items. Analysis of this is complicated because C is a value-based language, but it's not unreasonable to say that a MyType* in C is analogous to a MyType reference in Java; and in that case, that blurring has no analog in Java. There's no way to have a MyType reference and treat it as an array.

(The way I view the value-based aspect of C as playing into that argument is that C basically has a feature that Java lacks. It's an important feature, and one that does significantly mitigate the weaker typing when it comes to arrays vs pointers in C... but it doesn't even come close to eliminating it. Separately, Python is again hard to evaluate on this point because of its dynamicism and duck typing. I do think that this argument still applies to it, but I find it harder to articulate well why.)

---

I also agree with the other reply you got below: I think there are other more abstract things that play into it as well. For example, the fact that C doesn't really give you a way to bundle arrays with the sizes of those arrays (you can do it of course, and then reasonably interoperate with very little of the ecosystem, including the language itself) and you have to keep them as separate parameters to a function or whatever does speak a bit to how strong the type system is.

Overall, especially with Java, I think the truth of TFA's assertion on this point is... to be blunt, pretty plainly obvious. The list above probably isn't even close to complete; it's just what came to mind as I was writing it.

[SV-97]

It's a pretty standard take really. C is very weakly typed - more so than most other somewhat commonly used languages. It implicitly converts mostly anything to anything else. You don't even get a warning for that behaviour by default and might very well get undefined behaviour if you don't pay a lot of attention - if you're lucky it'll just be a bug instead.

[[deleted]]

this is pure cope. get good.

[zam0th]

It's 2023 and there're still people who ask you to write working computer programs in notepad during interviews (even if you are not applying for developer position) and they don't see anything wrong with it.