The Interview With The Programmer

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Would you trust a “physics scientist” who had no idea who Newton was?
In all fields there are people who have done great advances, their genius is such that it’s hard to learn about this things without knowing who they are.

I’d doubt that someone who had no idea who Alan Turing was (or at least that he was a person) has a deep understanding of Turing-Church machines or know about their implications.

Because it’s hard to learn about optimal algorithms (and proving such mathematically) without ever, ever hearing a reference to Knuth’s work has ever really learned a lot about efficiency, different techniques, and different algorithms. Moreover I’d doubt he’d know where to look for an optimal solution for a very strange problem (or realizing there is no such optimal solution).

I wouldn’t trust a “Linux Kernel Hacker” who doesn’t know who Linus is, or an open source “guru” that only returned a blank stare when he heard the name Stallman.

In every field there are great people, if you are into painting I’d expect you’d recognize a few know artists, Picasso, Magritte, Monet. If you were into music I’d expect that you know The Pixies, or maybe The Beatles, or maybe Mozart, or any combination, but I’d hope that you have heard other music and know it’s good.

Maybe we can’t recognize all the names, or all the things. But get a list of enough important people in a field, and you will find one that you not only heard of, but either admired, or detested, their actions and philosophy enough to remember them and recognize them.

Now it’s true, Atwood is stretching it a bit too far with such a limited list, maybe a better use of words, such as “I’d hope that any person who I’d hire would know at least one person in this list” but then again, is it surprising that he just went and said the first thing that came to his mind? Flame-wars are the publicity stunts of the 'net. So chillax people, if you don’t know people on the list, instead of arguing why you still should be a valid candidate for work, read about them, learn, become a valid candidate and then gain the pleasure of being the one who would return a rejection letter, in the end you can only become better programmers because of it.

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@Daniel Sobral

Well, at least I know I’m not alone. Feels good. :slight_smile:

I will never, never, NEVER, understands this prevalent attitude shown programmers getting their panties in a bunch when it is suggested that they should better themselves.

Would they prefer to hire a 9-to-5 surgeon or one that reads medical journals and goes to seminars and conferences (and, thus, could recognize the name the author of that article or the person giving the seminar)?

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“…I’d say that’s an immediate no-hire.”

That’s a bunch of bull IMHO…

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I suck at remembering names and other pieces of useless information. It’s tough to get a full appreciation of these people when you’ve never worked with them or saw their code (Maybe a book of their code samples would be better?). It’s like saying Micheal Jordan was great because I saw him on a box of Wheaties.

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Interesting idea, but I think your bar is a little too high. Perhaps, if you had said anyone who can’t name another programmer who has inspired them to be better without limiting it to just that list, I would agree. As it is, a lot of the people who have influenced me most don’t appear on that list: Bob Martin, Alistair Cockburn, Kent Beck, Martin Fowler, …

FWIW, I am hireable, but just barely.

53c byte

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Three more books to add to my reading list… only just after i’ve managed to knock two off!

But I don’t quite see why not knowing any of those names would be a handicap - while sometimes a person is identified with a technology (Gates/Windows, Stroustrup/C++, Berners-Lee/HTML) - I don’t really see why that should be for all cases… I use the technology I use because that technology is useful to the task, not because it has a person’s name attached to it.

Still, I agree that it is interesting (and inspiring and motiviating and insightful) to read about the motivations for decisions made by the people behind the technology, which is I now want to read these titles (but again, I would tend to remember the motivations and discussions rather than the names involved).

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"If the next programmer you interview can’t identify at least one of the programmers interviewed in Coders at Work and tell you roughly what they’re famous for …
… I’d say that’s an immediate no-hire. "

WHAT THE F***?

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One? Your threshold is one?

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‘They book-readers think they’re so smart!!!’, let us sit here and code instead as we always has done. Okay, it’s a little bit tedious to write hundreds of if-statements per day and have everything in a single file and all variables are global. What you gonna do? Ain’t gonna be one of those book-readers - they think they are so smart!!!

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Please delete this comment, just testing captcha (“balks” and “59 1/2” where 1/2 is a single character???)

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I see a lot of sore folks here. Perhaps Jeff’s suggestion has come off a little harsh but, one thing Jeff has consistently expressed throughout the life of his blog is a passion for for the industry. He has never once hid the fact that his passion borders on obsessiveness with what others may consider minutiae. I get the impression that he thoroughly loves computers and computing and all things tangential and in-between, down to the devices that go in his pocket, wallet or knapsack on his way to work (in that industry). It is that passion that lies behind a statement which on it’s face seems elitist; but is in fact probably no less than the “love of the game”. Surely one would expect even a batboy to at least have heard of Barry Bonds, Derek Jeter, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, or Jackie Robinson, should that batboy expect to walk on to Wrigely Field or Comerica Park. What buck private hasn’t heard of Napolean Bonaparte or Field Marshall Montgomery, Field Marshall Rommel, or Leonidas? Is it too much to ask that someone is a least a tiny bit familiar with some of the luminaries in the field of their chosen profession? Perhaps not, if one merely punches a clock and warms the watercooler with their forearm. But I believe that Mr. Atwood pours a good deal of effort in what he does, and would like to be surrounded by others who do the same.

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I think that’s a bit much about not hiring someone based on not knowing peopel from those lists. If you haven’t read “AI a Modern Approach,” “The Art of Computer Programming,” "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, programmed in Erlang and followed the community, follow the Javascript community extensively, or keep up with the very newest Turing Award winners, then you very well might know those people unless you are kind of a programming groupie as someone else said. But you still might be a great programmer that works well with others and all that jibber jabber.

Given the kinds of anti-intellectualism I see on this blog a lot I doubt Jeff as done any of the things previously mentioned, other than follow the Javascript community. It’s one thing to know “roughly” what Knuth is famous for and quite another to be able to speak intelligently about “The Art.” Honestly, I don’t find it that impressive to be able to spout a non-technical eight word sentence about a handful of the names of computer science pioneers.

Many of my very competent colleagues would only know Knuth or vaguely recall Thompson from that list (well, besides Frances Allen) and they win awards in this field themselves.

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You’re an idiot. Consider yourself dropped from required reading.

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@Sembi - I second that. What a moronic statement. What about if they don’t know C/C++ like you Jeff? Because you don’t need to know it? do you need to know about a bunch of programmers that were famous 20 years ago? I bet you don’t need that either.

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I can’t identify at least one of the programmers and I am coding for over 20 years by now.

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I agree with the others. A bit silly Jeff that you’d no-hire someone because they don’t know who someone is. Surely, what they’ve actually done is more important?

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Personally I admire Douglas Crockford a lot because I think he has a lot of good thoughts and insights. And he has made me respect Yahoo more as a company than before.

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"If the next programmer you interview can’t identify at least one of the programmers interviewed in Coders at Work and tell you roughly what they’re famous for …

Frances Allen Joe Armstrong Joshua Bloch
Bernie Cosell Douglas Crockford L. Peter Deutsch
Brendan Eich Brad Fitzpatrick Dan Ingalls
Simon Peyton Jones Donald Knuth Peter Norvig
Guy Steele Ken Thompson Jamie Zawinski

… I’d say that’s an immediate no-hire. "

So, you only want old guys…

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Sean wrote:

Personally, if someone was to ask me about influential works I >>would rhyme off names like Hunt, Thomas, Myers, Dikstra, Liskov, >>Fowler, McConnell, Sutter, Stroustrup, Abrash, etc, etc, etc … >>I’d even throw a prop out to Joel and Jeff, despite them having an >>affinity for controversy lately.

You didn’t spell Dijkstra correctly. I would not hire you. You clearly have no passion for the craft.

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That list is also quite US centric - there are a lot of developers in other countries around the world, and I qould hazard a guess that at least some of them might be pretty darn good.

Just for a funny example, one of the best developers I’ve ever worked with didn’t know who were Bob Dylan, steven Spielberg and Ronald Reagan. Not everything American is automatically known in other countries.