alaaibrahim's comments

alaaibrahim | 6 years ago | on: Why Linked Lists Are an Interview Staple

I've interviewed a lot of people, and I've asked LL questions, besides other algorithmic questions, and mostly I ask these questions to new grads with no much experience. The reason is, if you don't have much work experience, what else would I ask you, it's something that you've been learning about recently in your CS degree, and I want to see if you can apply what you learned.

If you have work experience that is relevant, or don't have a CS degree, I'll ask something else.

For me I feel that a lot of people don't understand that an interview is a conversation, feel free to think out loud, ask questions, and ask for help. I want to see your thinking process, I don't really care about the actual solution.

alaaibrahim | 8 years ago | on: Ask HN: Is big-endian dead?

Not exctly accurate, for the part of the number that is < 100, it will always be R-L, as in 25, would be 5 and twenty in Arabic.

Also for the part that is L-R, that is not the rule, as some people still read all the number as R-L (actually in a lot of historical documents that was the case), so the would read 1925 as five and twenty and nine hundred and a thousand. Where is now most people would read it as a thousand, and nine hundred, and five and twenty.

alaaibrahim | 8 years ago | on: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

Could you explain why is that the case, I've heard that multiple times, but for me the math doesn't work out.

If I earn an amount of (x+y), I would get taxed on (x+y), but if I donate x money, I would get taxed on y, but I've already paid x in donations, so unless there is something fishy going on with the x donations part, it would make sense for someone to not donate, as they are already being taxed on y, and the taxes on x would be less than x.

So how are the rich making these donations out of my wallet?

alaaibrahim | 8 years ago | on: I spent my career in tech, but wasn’t prepared for its effect on my kids

For me it's not even a conscious effort, as it feels rude to be on your phone, when you are having a meal with someone. Is it not rude to start reading a book while you are having a lunch with someone, why is the phone any different.

When there is a need to look at your phone (Important message, a call, or even to look up something), I think the polite thing is to excuse yourself, do the thing really quickly, and get back to your meal.

alaaibrahim | 8 years ago | on: I'm not a Woman in Tech

> I can make nasty off-handed comments to my friends in private chat all day, with very little fear that it'll see the light.

And then, someone decides to take a screenshot, out of context, and post it somewhere for the whole world to see.

alaaibrahim | 9 years ago | on: Hiring without whiteboards

Have you ever tried to bring a laptop to an interview, and asked to use it instead of the whiteboard? Believe me very few would object.

alaaibrahim | 9 years ago | on: What Is the Highest Salary Can a Programmer Make?

Here is my recipe (YMMV)

- Love what you do, this is extremely important, although you have goals in mind, you should enjoy the process to reach your goals, this would make you work harder, and failure wouldn't be a big deal, as you enjoy it.

- Practice, solve useless problems for fun, sharpen your skills, until you become really good at what you do.

- Really know what you are good at, and what you are not, and don't be afraid of pointing out what you don't know, even to someone who is interviewing you, and always know why you don't know, and if you need to know what you have to do.

- At this point, have the mentality whenever you go to an interview, that they would gain more from hiring you, that you would gain from being hired by them.

- Profit!!!.

Edit: formatting

alaaibrahim | 9 years ago | on: The Tenacity of Tech Recruiters

I do understand your sentiment, I was flattered when I first moved the to bay area, with all the recruiters sending me emails, and I would politely reply telling them that I'm not available (because of my immigration status).

But, the problem is that it's the same template, and most of the recruiters haven't even bothered to check the message that they sent (I think they are using some software to send these emails).

My name has an apostrophe in it, when the email starts with

    Hi Ala&#39;,
I know that he didn't check anything, and he is not interested in me, but in anyone.

When the email contains a lot of false statements, like

    Your experience in Python is impressive.
given that I don't use python, and my knowledge in it is very limited.

When you are receiving these emails 10 times a week, it becomes annoying.

alaaibrahim | 9 years ago | on: Why I close pull requests

> Remember, they said "out of the blue" which means "without prior contact to discuss doing so."

If I do contact the maintainer before I do any change, that means I'm making a commitment to do that change, which is not something I want to do.

> If you're just looking to pump and dump, I'd rather not involve you in the process, only to have to do work to fix/rm code down the road.

I think you should always assume with any PR, that it's a pump and dump, unless you have a history with whoever raised the PR.

> It's your time to waste.

I don't think it's a waste, it's an issue that I'm facing (or a feature that I want), so writing the code is for my own need, I'm sharing it back in case other people want it.

alaaibrahim | 9 years ago | on: Why I close pull requests

Why Not?

I see a problem that I can fix, I do that, and then send it back to the original maintainer, making sure that I'm not breaking tests if they exist, and providing a good description of the change. Then it's up to the maintainer to either merge it, or throw it away.

Of course, I don't have any problem with getting my PRs closed, I'm not the one who would end up maintaining the code.

alaaibrahim | 9 years ago | on: Taking PHP Seriously

> although you can mitigate much of this with various caching strategies but the typical PHP request involves reading dozens to maybe hundreds of files from disk, compiling them into byte code, and then executing that byte code, and then deallocating everything.

For the conversion to bytecode, that is what apc is for.

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