Comments for The Technological African's Blog

Comment on 10 “Best” Code Comments by Fredo

Fredo — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:33:33 +0000

Some months ago I found this comment while digging through code:

// They made me do it

Comment on Have you heard about Konza City? by Inner Space Africa

Inner Space Africa — Thu, 03 May 2012 08:25:10 +0000

http://myseokenya.com
Konza city for sure will change not only Kenya but Africa at large, however like nyambura asked, why not in marginalized areas? i mean yes it is a great project but Machakos is so near Nairobi and maybe we need to exploit other areas too instead of suffocating the ‘city’?

Comment on Cardiopad: A Cameroonian Medical Tablet by African Tech News Tidbits: Week of April 10th « The Technological African's Blog

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 16:21:46 +0000

[...] News from the Tech Scene in Cameroon: The Cardiopad, which we had talked about previously, has just secured funding from the government to the tune of about $40,000. Cameroon is also seeing [...]

Comment on The Problematic Developer/Programmer Interview Process by Abou Kone

Abou Kone — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 17:58:37 +0000

Good points Mircea!
On your side note, I think to me that’s a fair way of getting to know how the candidate codes and processes information. Makes sense to me. Without bothering with the technicalities of remembering all the details of how libraries work it’s a fair way of getting to know the level of the candidate.

Comment on The Problematic Developer/Programmer Interview Process by Mircea

Mircea — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 16:03:43 +0000

There are a couple of things to consider here:
- what happens during the interview usually depends on the job position you are applying for (different approach for an entry level and senior level positions)
- the one that hires errs on the side of caution (ie it’s better not to hire a good candidate than to hire a disastrous one) – may seem and it is sometimes unfair but that’s life
- it’s not unreasonable to polish up you skills a bit before the interviews. you do want to be at your peak during the interview and you do want a refresh of the basic CS stuff. while on the job your favorite search engine will be your sidekick, during an interview not knowing or failing to articulate something that’s basic cs is a red flag.
- from a certain level up it’s a lottery. don’t take any rejection personally.
- continue to improve your skills working on building/improving something real (ie open source) and you will get there. think about what’s more important: working at Fb so that you can brag about it or working on something that challenges.

One a side note: the coolest interview I had was with a guy that simply brought a laptop, had a project setup with some tests written and a skeleton for the code that needed to be written. We did pair programming, with him helping with technicalities like how do you run the tests, what is the correct syntax for this (it was C# with some generics in it, and at the time I’ve been working in C for ~ 2 years), what do you think about this approach – basically pair programming without him giving the answer.

Comment on WAMP Apache Error: “You don’t have permission to access / on this server” by roflmao

roflmao — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 19:58:44 +0000

I had no idea that the includes actually cast an override on the original httpd.conf.
Thanks for this advice – I didnt’ use the

 tag (since I'm in Linux, you see), but it still worked on my Linux side when I threw that into httpd-vhosts.conf. THANKS <3

Comment on The Problematic Developer/Programmer Interview Process by Deric Ferreira

Deric Ferreira — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:03:19 +0000

Nice post!

Comment on The Problematic Developer/Programmer Interview Process by r0lle

r0lle — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 07:05:42 +0000

Nice post, and I agree. First time I had to search for new programmers I checked the Internet for how people are doing the tests an so. And yes, a lot of questions about bubble-sort and such. So I started writing these tests for the potential interviewee…but then I realized that for me to write the test, I have to know the answer myself. So I in turn had to google for the answers etc. (Not difficult, but since not used we forget the details etc) That’s when I realized, “hey what the heck am I doing?” If I don’t know the answer and I don’t really think it is relevant, why should I ask the person I interview for this? So I never used them.

Comment on The Problematic Developer/Programmer Interview Process by Keyvan Nayyeri (@keyvan)

Keyvan Nayyeri (@keyvan) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 01:04:59 +0000

I know a guy who learned something from one of my books and now he’s working at MS as a program manager and his daily job is based on my book’s topic. Such a person is just an idiot if he makes that statement! I’ve received that on my blog before, but I don’t give a damn! Such people are far from a point to know what is going on at all. They just have a pure love for these software companies blindly.

Comment on The Problematic Developer/Programmer Interview Process by Abou Kone

Abou Kone — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:45:26 +0000

I am just waiting for a troll to show up and argue that we are just bitter because a)we failed when interviewing with those companies b)Could not even get an interview with those companies c) don’t have what it takes.