Should job seeking programmers understand object oriented programming? Do you think job seeking programmers should understand object oriented programming fundamentals? Apparently some people think not. Our recent blog post "Unfortunately, we'll reject most software developer job applications.” explains how we ask interview questions about object oriented programming.



Some commenters disagreed with what we had to say in that blog post. Here is our response.

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Unfortunately, we'll reject most software developer job applications. We WANT to get you a job, so we get paid. We don't want to reject your job application. In an ideal world, we would get a job for EVERYONE who applies. Hundreds and hundreds of people apply for jobs, so if we got jobs for everyone who applied, we'd buy yachts and islands, trips on spaceships and ponies for our children. read more

Great Australian software developers: Nick Gammon & G-Pascal Australian software developers include some of the worlds most talented. This blog post celebrates the work of Nick Gammon, an Australian software developer who in 1983 wrote a pascal compiler for the Commodore 64 and Apple 2 computers. It ran in 16K of RAM. Here's how he did it. read more

Making a job offer? Lowest isn't always best. Some employers tend to offer the bottom of the salary range that a potential new employee asks for. Not because there is any reason to negotiate down, not because the budget can't stretch any further, but because they feel they should offer the minimum that was asked for. It's just the way it's done. read more

50 characteristics of a great software developer When recruiting software developers, many employers focus too much on previous experience with specific technologies. Knowledge of Java, Ajax, XML, MySQL or whatever is important, but it’s not everything. A software developer is more than the sum of the technologies that have worked with. read more

Design patterns have (mostly) flopped Are you sitting near a computer programmer right now? If yes, then here is a simple practical exercise for you to complete before you read past this first paragraph. Corner your programmer, ask them these two questions and write down the answers. First ask them "What are design patterns?". Second, ask them to "Name every design pattern that you can recall". Make sure you ask these questions one-on-one, otherwise all the programmers in the cubicle will chime in with their answers. If you are a computer programmer then write the answers down yourself before reading on..... read more

Stuff you must know: your tools Few programmers have in-depth knowledge of the primary development technology that they have chosen to work with. Programmers work with Java, C#, C++, VB.NET and PHP and other languages in blissful ignorance of key concepts, features and functions of the programming language, the libraries, the API’s, the object models, the frameworks and the virtual machines that they code with every day. read more

Stuff you must know: object-oriented fundamentals I’ve run job advertisements recently that ask for people “who visit sites like Joel On Software and Stack Overflow”. This has led to an increase in the number of job seekers who during the phone interview claim to read Joel On Software and Stack Overflow. Perhaps that’s because the job advertisements are working, and attracting the people who do read those blogs. I don’t think so however because scratch the surface and these same people don’t know much, if anything, about those sites and few of them have a Stack Overflow account that shows a history of participation. People read the job ads and craft their answers to meet the requirements. They’re telling me what I want to hear. read more

The skills matrix Morpheus: What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer-generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this (holds up a Duracell battery).

Neo: No, I don't believe it. It's not possible.

Morpheus: I didn't say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth.

- Quote from “The Matrix” read more

Coders who don’t read I fell in love with computers when I was about 11 years old in the dim dark days of the birth of the personal computer circa 1979. I was in 7th grade. One day the science teacher brought this strange machine into school and set it up at a desk in a dark corner of a small mezzanine floor, elevated twelve feet up above the school science room which was full of benches and cupboards containing strange, arcane scientific equipment like pipes, tubes, meters, bottles with rubber stoppers, chemicals, electronics and soldering irons. It’s impossible to describe how totally and immediately I was taken when I saw that tiny black and white screen with the text and blinking cursor. The computer was running a text adventure game and I was totally immersed and my life changed forever. Most ordinary people had not even heard of computers at this time so it was like living in science fiction. It was a rare magical moment in life. From that point on most of my free time was spent thinking about computers. read more