Comments on: Certification? Please, no. http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/certification-please-no/ programming, politics, & other religious issues Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:31:40 +0000 hourly 1 By: Elias http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/certification-please-no/#comment-37085 Elias Sun, 13 Dec 2009 08:00:54 +0000 http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/archive/2007/07/04/276#comment-37085 (maybe, another way to test if someone is a good programmer is to show him 4 implementations for each of 10 functions of a program and ask him to select one for each function. it works for any language and you might be able to classify each response belonging to a "kind" of programmer. but if you ask him to pick the solutions that could be generally considered the fastest, or maybe more elegant, you might as well be able to select those that knows more about the language - especially tricky if you also list reasons for each selection, such as "This code is the fastest in most compilers because of such and such optimization") (maybe, another way to test if someone is a good programmer is to show him 4 implementations for each of 10 functions of a program and ask him to select one for each function. it works for any language and you might be able to classify each response belonging to a “kind” of programmer. but if you ask him to pick the solutions that could be generally considered the fastest, or maybe more elegant, you might as well be able to select those that knows more about the language – especially tricky if you also list reasons for each selection, such as “This code is the fastest in most compilers because of such and such optimization”)

]]> By: Elias http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/certification-please-no/#comment-37084 Elias Sun, 13 Dec 2009 07:52:29 +0000 http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/archive/2007/07/04/276#comment-37084 any machine or mechanism you can express, i mean. any machine or mechanism you can express, i mean.

]]> By: Elias http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/certification-please-no/#comment-37083 Elias Sun, 13 Dec 2009 07:51:05 +0000 http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/archive/2007/07/04/276#comment-37083 you are from jana street? there were a guy at #ocaml at freenode that was talking about how few ocaml jobs there are he thoght that your company would be a dream place to work (at least compared to those were you program in java or c++). i just hope you guys don't go out of business and more people start using those "weird" cs languages such as ocaml or haskell. i also do agree about certifications, :) (I also think this post is too huge, maybe you had subject here for 2 or 3 posts) about programmers: programming is half engineering, half poetry. someone that can't write beautiful code can't program well; someone who have no imagination too. to write a program is really a linguistic effort, a effort of expressing with code (fundamentally, words) the internal working of an abstract mechanism. anything you can express in a well-defined way constitute a program (in some language); so maybe, if you want to test if someone is a good programmer, you might test if he can define things in a clear, concise, non-ambiguous way, and if he can handle with complex but clear definitions, even if they use language constructs they can't handle very well. about your questions: they were tricky, I understood the "can be enforced" as meaning "is always enforced", you got me :) (also, I am reading your monad tutorial. I really didn't knew about that last questions and I never understood very well this stuff about monads too. thanks) you are from jana street? there were a guy at #ocaml at freenode that was talking about how few ocaml jobs there are he thoght that your company would be a dream place to work (at least compared to those were you program in java or c++). i just hope you guys don’t go out of business and more people start using those “weird” cs languages such as ocaml or haskell.

i also do agree about certifications, :)

(I also think this post is too huge, maybe you had subject here for 2 or 3 posts)

about programmers: programming is half engineering, half poetry. someone that can’t write beautiful code can’t program well; someone who have no imagination too. to write a program is really a linguistic effort, a effort of expressing with code (fundamentally, words) the internal working of an abstract mechanism.

anything you can express in a well-defined way constitute a program (in some language); so maybe, if you want to test if someone is a good programmer, you might test if he can define things in a clear, concise, non-ambiguous way, and if he can handle with complex but clear definitions, even if they use language constructs they can’t handle very well.

about your questions: they were tricky, I understood the “can be enforced” as meaning “is always enforced”, you got me :)

(also, I am reading your monad tutorial. I really didn’t knew about that last questions and I never understood very well this stuff about monads too. thanks)

]]> By: Upped The Recent Post/Popular Post Widget Count | Enfranchised Mind http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/certification-please-no/#comment-33664 Upped The Recent Post/Popular Post Widget Count | Enfranchised Mind Tue, 12 Aug 2008 19:32:07 +0000 http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/archive/2007/07/04/276#comment-33664 [...] Certification? Please, no. [...] [...] Certification? Please, no. [...]

]]> By: Brian http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/certification-please-no/#comment-31779 Brian Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:49:15 +0000 http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/archive/2007/07/04/276#comment-31779 Nope. Try this again: <CODE><PRE>let open (flag: [< `async | `sync] as `a) name = match flag with | `async -> (* async code *) | `sync -> (* sync code *) ;; </PRE></CODE> Nope. Try this again:

let open (flag: [< `async | `sync] as `a) name =
    match flag with
    | `async -> (* async code *)
    | `sync -> (* sync code *)
;;

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