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No, his knowledge is very practical, and his books come full of examples that work. If you want proof, then read any book he has written.
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Maybe we see differently the 'practical' part...
I've read a lot of books of him, and have learned a lot too, my point is that Charles Petzold can not be a baseline for practical knowledge. He has a much wilder knowledge, but i doubt that he ever had the time to actually implement it on a real application...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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What does that matter? His books are still excellent practical guides to programming.
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No doubt! But the whole conversation started if it is a good point to compare someone knowledge to Petzold's...or better pick up someone like Marc, you or other CPians...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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Richard MacCutchan wrote: his knowledge is very practical ... read any book he has written
I've read two: "Code" and "The Annotated Turing". Now, what's that about "practical"? 
But seriously, I agree with you. And I need to read more of his stuff.
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Mycroft Holmes wrote: Rating against a senior dev is very different to rating against a guru.
I have never met a guru. I have met plenty of people who thought they were gurus, but never met an actual guru.
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King Fisher wrote: checking my their confident level or technical skill?
Peter Wasser
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell
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In many cases an interview question is asked, not to elicit a simple answer but rather to gain an insight into the candidate's problem solving process.
For example if you just say "8" without qualification or further discussion they might conclude that you are not analytical or investigative enough.
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When I was interviewing I would always ask this for the technologies required - and hopefully elicit some discussion;
For example, I asked it of a junior candidate for a job, about SQL - he answered "9 or 10" - so , I asked for him to confirm there was nothing about SQL he didn't know. He started talking about how he hadn't really used UDFs - and went on to talk about what he had done - as he continued to adjust his score down, and describe his level of knowledge, I gleaned enough information for me to be confident that he did know his limitations, and for me to know what they were.
It is a good, simple way of assessing someones knowledge by engaging them in conversation rather than asking lots of tedious questions.
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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With the availability of google, skill level is almost a moot point. I've found you have to be a better searcher most of the time.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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I used to keep piles of books on my desk. I would never throw out an old book.
Now... I have a clean desk, I just google everything. Google takes you from entry level to wherever you want to be in short order (generally speaking).
I was looking at my old books at home this weekend. I could not decide whether to have a bon fire (lots of fun) or just box them in the garage (just in case).
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while I agree to a point, one still needs an underlying skill-set to be able to search sensibly, and to utilise the results of a search in a sensible manner.
Sure you can learn stuff from scratch from t'webs - but I want people who have done it before, worked out the kinks, have a good overview of the pitfalls - not someone who can copy some SQL, achieve the task, and not understand what they've done.
I find out what sort of person they are by having the sort of conversation elicited by the 'score yourself out to 10' question.
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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I hate that question. Typically, I'll say 7 or 8, just to be honest and safe, but they give the job to the guy that says 10!
It is one of those questions that an interviewer asks when they are either not technical or they don't know much anyways.
One of the worst questions I ever was asked was, tell me about .Net Framework. My response was, what do you want to know.
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I usually take this to be a rating of my confidence in my own abilities rather than a rating of my technical skill.
I know a friend of mine who was interviewing a recent graduate for a role of software developer who rated himself as a 9 out of 10 for C# despite having very little commercial exposure to it. Was he over confident or telling the truth? His other responses during the rest of the interview apparently revealed it was almost certainly over confidence.
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare
Home | LinkedIn | Google+ | Twitter
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I ask that question all the time when interviewing a candidate, here is why?
1. I want to know what the candidate feels about his/her level.
2. I adjust the questions based on the level the candidate thinks. For example if someone thinks they are at level 8/9 but are struggling to answer some mid level questions then either they are not honest or they don't know too much.
The scale is arbitrary to me and just by itself does not reflect anything. But combining it with other factors and metrics, it gives me a glimpse of the candidates aptitude.
Let me give you couple examples:
1. Not too long ago I interviewed a candidate for senior level position. When I asked him to rate himself on C# and .net he said 9 out of 10. Later when I asked him to do some coding exercise he said he feels more comfortable talking about the theories and how the framework works and was reluctant to write a code on the white board. I kept explaining to him I was not looking for clean code and some syntax errors ( missing semicolon ) are not a factor. I cut the interview short half way through the coding exercise because he was struggling to write c# code for the position. The scale he gave himself didn't meet what I observed.
2. Another time, I asked a candidate to rate himself he said 6/7, but he was able to answer most questions and show solid code. Later I asked him why he gave himself a rate of 7, he said even though he knows enough there are many areas he would like to improve. We ended up offering him the position.
So, the rate a candidate gives me by it self does not mean much. But it helps me to alter the interview according to what the candidate thinks about themselves. If a candidate underrates himself / herself significantly just to impress me, I will have hard time to consider them for the position.
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Just run around in circles outside for a while, killing SQL gurus to level up.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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With @Damien[^]
What a nice chap!
Hope the hard drive isn't fubar, mate!
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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The b*s*ard keeps repeating the same old lie.
«OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things. » Alan Kay's clarification on what he meant by the term "Object" in "Object-Oriented Programming."
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I thought you were going to quote Agatha Christie -- "The Mirror Cracked from Side to Side".
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Reflecting on what you said, I think you you are a good looking, glass-half-full sort of chap!
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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Zounds ! 'struth me half-full best be seen "through a glass darkly."
«OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things. » Alan Kay's clarification on what he meant by the term "Object" in "Object-Oriented Programming."
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I was going to quote the "through a glass, darkly" phrase - but I've never been sure what it meant - my knowledge of the phrase being via the PK Dick novel "A Scanner Darkly".
I never realised it was biblical in origin! (then again, what isn't Biblical is usually Shakespearean)
Zounds, indeed 
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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It is the immancence of the arrival of Pooper Pig, and the Gift of the Eschaton, that allows us to have the same thoughts at the same time, although I suspect this is simply a transient flux in the just-around-the-corner erasure of all minds.
«OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things. » Alan Kay's clarification on what he meant by the term "Object" in "Object-Oriented Programming."
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Astonishingly, I had a feeling you were going to say that (even if I did have to resort to a dictionary!).
I'm uncertain that the arrival of PooperPig is either immanent or imminent, that Eschaton is a gift, or that the erasure of minds is just-arround-the-corner.
Forests and falling trees notwithstanding, as we experience all of creation through the interpretation of our minds, it could be argued (discussed?) that every thought is a manifestation of some reality; if there is indeed only one reality, then thoughts are real; if thoughts are real, then deja-vu, I-was-just-going-to-say-that, and jinx[^] are simply two minds sharing the same reality, observing the same thought - no more mysterious than two people seeing the same lightning, hearing the same thunder or being wet by the same rain.
But then, you probably had a feeling I was thinking that?!
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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Hi _Maxxx_, Well, of course: as Hierophant of the Eschaton it is your destiny ... in that role ... to experience doubts as to your calling to this sacred mission; even, to question your own sanity !
But, take heart, and keep in mind that our word, "serendipity," comes from the name of a Persian Prince, "Serendip:" [^].
Even if you do not survive the cosmic labor that gives birth to PooperPig, your glory is already eternal !
cheers, Bill
p.s. about two years ago I had an interesting e-mail exchange with a friend who was reading a draft of a short-story of mine in progress; and he mentioned the famous lines in Matthew; that led me into an interesting (well, to me) digression based on study of those lines in Demotic Greek. Of interest was the use of "holon" for "whole" in verse #22, and "poneros" for "perhaps/will be/becomes whole" in #23, as well as the possible reference to a "luminous body" in #22 (to soma sou photeinon). The dynamic and dramatic apposition of #22 and #23 is suggestive of what the Romans might call "enatidromia per tenebras ad lucem, "a fluctuation/cycling/transformaton of opposites from shadows to light," although "entidromia" (from the Greek) has other meanings (cf. Plato), and an interesting modern interpretation in the work of Carl Jung.
I will not post the comments I wrote back to my friend here since I feel they might be considered as religiously controversial, and in violation of the Lounge gestalt. If, for any reason, you'd like to read the comments, then post a message here I can reply to privately.
«OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things. » Alan Kay's clarification on what he meant by the term "Object" in "Object-Oriented Programming."
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