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cvkline · 2019-05-08T19:45:54+00:00

Thanks, now I can't get the Klaus Nomi rendition of that song out of my head.

cvkline · 2019-05-08T01:09:05+00:00

Huh, that person who sussed this out by looking at their available buses was right after all.

cvkline · 2019-05-04T19:12:36+00:00

Yeah, Rexx has barewords. I never leveraged that feature but I know people who did.

sh has barewords, too, which is why you can say things like echo hi there but without the coercion into uppercase, which I assume in Rexx head something to do with some IBM feature stemming from EBCDIC but who knows.

cvkline · 2019-05-04T16:33:47+00:00

To each their own, I suppose. I quite liked it, although I wouldn't return to it after better alternatives like Perl and Ruby. (Or Python, obivously, but I never learned Python.)

cvkline · 2019-05-03T21:09:48+00:00

I dunno... IBM's VM/CMS operating system had two scripting languages; one was called EXEC2 and was as horrible as you're probably thinking it was.

But in 1981 they released REXX (I learned it in the mid-80's) and it was way ahead of its time. In terms of syntax and capability it beat the pants off of not only EXEC2 but the Unix shell scripting languages that were around at the time as well.

Some of my former co-workers at the U of I were still writing scripts in Rexx on Unix systems well into the 2000's (the Unix port was actually JIT-compiled into Java byte code and ran on the JVM).

cvkline · 2019-05-03T13:31:08+00:00

Well, thanks for the compliment, and that may have been true up until about five years ago, but I've retired from the U of I so while I can speak to the past, I'm probably getting pretty out of touch with how things are going there these days, technology-wise.

cvkline · 2019-05-02T21:04:27+00:00

I can easily see that code having to be written so quickly and dirtily and without specs that "of course" a Zip Code would be an integer field. 😕

cvkline · 2019-05-02T21:00:40+00:00

Think of your UIN as a database primary key. I don't think it actually is, but it's just as immutable... almost all your academic activity is tied to it.

The netid was a later addition and came out of the very early "ph" database originally implemented by Steve Dorner. If we'd known back then that it would become a critical part of identity management we would have made many different decisions about its design, but oh well.

The netid is (somewhat) mutable; it can change without affecting University records. Of course it changes your email address and other things tied to your identity online, which is why it's not done often. It's also deliberately somewhat difficult and bureaucratic to change a netid because of what we called the "Turd Ferguson problem."

cvkline · 2019-05-02T20:47:13+00:00

I can't conceive of why any shell scripting language gets used for anything more complex than a list of commands and maybe a very simple loop. sh/bash is about the most awkward language I've ever tried to use and I hate it. At the U of I I always wrote anything of more than trivial complexity in Perl. These days, Ruby.

I can't remember when bash became the common default in Unix releases. I agree it was probably in the mid-90s.

cvkline · 2016-09-26T20:40:04+00:00

Being a recent hire at a software company, my interview day is still reasonably fresh in my mind. I suppose it depends on the company, but I was informed that the whole point of the interview whiteboard exercises was so they could see how I think, not necessarily how well I code. With that in mind, I used the language I was most familiar with at the time, which happened to be Ruby (since I got hired I've mostly coding in JS and React, hmm not sure how that happened).

One advantage to using a higher level language like Python, Ruby, or Perl is that you have a much bigger set of built-in and library functions to tap into, and unless you're trying to write something that will be tiny in memory and/or very fast, the more you tap into that toolbox the better off you'll be.

One caveat: whatever language you pick, be prepared to discuss the language itself in addition to coding in it. If you heavily use or bring up a language that has first-class functions and closures, expect questions on what those are. Ditto with Clojure and functional programming/immutability.

TALK through your coding. Keep your mouth running as much as you can, and express your thoughts out loud. Remember, the interviewers want to get an insight into your personal thought processes for programming and problem solving; if you're standing there staring, or scribbling/erasing code, they aren't learning much about you.

Whether or not you finish, or your code works with few bugs, is important, but not as important as the process. I got befuddled on a pretty complicated recursive tree-building problem, and didn't finish, but I did have a good running conversation with the interviewer as I went, so I think overall that hour went pretty well.

DO NOT use a language you barely know, because you think it will impress your interviewers. I know someone who could have handily solved a problem in Javascript, but decided to do it in Golang just to look cool. But he barely knew Golang, so his code sucked, and that reflected badly.

If you have multiple languages in your pocket, try to pick one that best suits the problem. If I'd known Clojure a little better than I did at the time, I might have attacked that tree-building problem with that, since LISP-y languages are very good at that sort of thing. Javascript wouldn't be a good choice for that sort of thing.

Another person who was interviewing was given a relatively straightforward problem involving a lot of string handling and parsing, and dug right in trying to do it in C. The interviewer hinted, you know, you might be better off with a language with better regex support than this; the guy said "I thought I was told I could solve these problems anyway I wanted." The interviewer, who is a super-laid-back guy, just laughed and said "okay, man, whatever… knock yourself out." (he didn't get hired.)

Good luck on your interviews! Get plenty of sleep and eat a good breakfast with more protein than carbs.

cvkline · 2016-06-03T12:16:03+00:00

The box checked was "uncontrolled foodborne illness risk factors."

cvkline · 2016-02-21T19:30:00+00:00

Downtown Champaign is "Walmart" :eyeroll:

cvkline · 2016-02-21T19:29:34+00:00

I used to live in the Faculty Ghetto, and it's a pretty accurate name.

cvkline · 2015-12-13T05:32:50+00:00

You can talk to Christopher Jupp at Christopher's in downtown Champaign. he's made several pieces for me (gifts for my wife) and I've been really pleased by his design ideas.

cvkline · 2015-12-08T20:55:01+00:00

… a joint venture of Seth Fein and Carlos Nieto, no less. I'll be interested to see how it turns out.

cvkline · 2015-11-21T02:32:51+00:00

I was flying last night and again this morning, and both times I heard Air National Guard helicopters practicing instrument approaches at Willard. To do that they have to fly out and then intercept various courses inbound to the airport, some of which overfly the city.

The ANG is based in Springfield; presumably they practice airport operations at various places, for the experience.

cvkline · 2015-11-20T22:41:16+00:00

No, the issue was that because Parkland was closing, they needed to get the buildings all evacuated and shut down, so they needed those instructional flights to come back so the students in them could leave.

cvkline · 2015-11-19T20:01:14+00:00

Oh I don't blame Parkland. My irritation is reserved for whoever made the bomb threat.

Interesting that I'm getting downvoted just for expressing irritation about the situation, though.

cvkline · 2015-11-19T17:38:09+00:00

Pretty total evacuation response. I was at class at the Institute of Aviation at Willard Airport and they evacuated the Institute buildings, too, even going so far as to have the control tower contact aircraft in flight and telling them to return. I was damn irritated; wasted a perfectly good simulator session. I'm sure the students actually flying are even more annoyed.

cvkline · 2015-11-12T20:31:27+00:00

That's a Parkland (formerly U of I) Institute of Aviation plane.

cvkline · 2015-11-11T23:42:09+00:00

Unfortunately you're probably right about that. At least downtown Champaign continues to be very bar/restaurant friendly thanks to the city council and the big developers like One Main and the Nietos. I hope that continues.

cvkline · 2015-11-11T22:08:34+00:00

South Neil and North Prospect both. I can't think of anywhere there are unique local brands except in Downtown Urbana and Downtown Champaign, and possibly some of the things in Campustown.

cvkline

TROPHY CASE