workingandtired's comments

Yeah, you're right. FizzBuzz does test a programmers mindset and it's pretty clear she didn't meet those expectations. I was focusing on a tiny aspect of it.

The main point I was trying to get at is that it doesn't seem to me like she identifies as a programmer. She's a UI/UX designer with a little bit of code experience. IMO, the whole point of it wasn't that she was upset that she didn't get the job or what they asked her. It was simply that based on the description, she went in thinking the primary focus was mockups, design and user testing rather than programming. Had the post been more clear about their expectations for the position, she wouldn't have tried for it.

Yeah, you're right about that. I was just trying to explain how you can work in an environment and make websites, but not necessarily grasp a full understanding of the language you're working in.

But my feeling from the post was that she is first and foremost a UI/UX designer, with some supplemental jquery/js knowledge. She applied for the job thinking it was a fit, but didn't find out otherwise until the middle of the interview. She wasn't qualified for what they were looking for, but I can empathize with the ambiguity in some of the job listings requirements.

Yeah, I guess I didn't quite make my point clear. All I meant was that it's easy to work inside frameworks without truely understanding the language.

I wasn't "comparing" myself to her. I was just explaining how it could happen. I agree that she wasn't qualified for the job and didn't deserve to get it. But I'd be willing to guess that if they job had a line like "This job will be 75% programming, 25% ui/ux design", she wouldn't have applied. I feel like she was looking for a design job but didn't find out otherwise until the middle of the interview.

Like I mentioned below, as a self taught web programmer, it was years before I came across a modulus in a real-world situation. I feel like it's understandable to not have a 100% grasp on all the basics and still produce stuff.

I think the more damning thing in her case is her questioning the question and seemingly not giving it a thorough effort.

Again, just listing "HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript." by itself as a minimum qualification doesn't specify what level of knowledge is expected of you. Familiarity? Proficiency? Master? Do you need to know how v8 interprets Javascript?

I'm not making the case that the job was right for her or that she was competent enough to handle it. I'm arguing that ambiguities in descriptions wasted both her time and the company's time.

To be fair, I was a self taught programmer (albeit PHP) and I was on my second or third programming job before I came across a modulus in the wild. It's really simple basic programming theory, but not super common in live web development.

I do the same, and it's pretty common. I feel like the point of the post is that if that is what a company expects, they should outline it in the initial job description to prevent wasting everybody's time. Just saying HTML/CSS/JS Angular/Backbone doesn't indicate what level of expertise you want or how big a part they'll play in the position.

I don't disagree with you that the job expected programming in their candidate. Nor should she have rationalized away the two lines that mentioned Javascript in description. However, I do believe that there is a communication error on the part of the company.

A UI/UX Designer/Engineer does not inherently require programming. In many startups, it does, as does wearing many hats. But if they're looking for someone to program, it should be outlined in the responsibilities. Knowing "HTML/CSS/JS" is different than building an entire application (just an example).

Not only that, but the line "Experienced with Object Oriented JavaScript and modern JavaScript libraries such as Ember, Backbone, or Angular." was placed under "Preferred Qualifications", which to me says "desirable but not necessarily required". If that's not what they meant, they should have clarified the importance.

My personal opinion is that if a job wants you to build stuff, they should outright say "You will be responsible for developing and maintaing a code base, in addition to designing and lending UI/UX expertise" rather than just loading a job listing with keywords.

I don't think it's necessary for the post. I figured the comments would be a nice place for it if people were curious.

I could be wrong, but I believe the post that he's referring to as inspiration is this one: https://css-tricks.com/tales-of-a-non-unicorn-a-story-about-...

A pretty interesting story about job titles and descriptions that are not representative of the job they're trying to hire for.

Quick tip/Easter egg. Wrapping the text in parenthesis allows you to do triplets.

From the wikipedia page for nation [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation]:

The word "nation" is sometimes used as synonym for:

State (polity) or sovereign state: a government which controls a specific territory, which may or may not be associated with any particular ethnic group

Country: a geographic territory, which may or may not have an affiliation with a government or ethnic group

Thus the phrase "nations of the world" could be referring to the top-level governments (as in the name for the United Nations), various large geographical territories, or various large ethnic groups of the planet.

In general, whenever I come across the word "nation" I assume it's being used colloquially to refer to "nation-state", unless the context is specifically related to ethnic nationalistic identities.

Well, if you have any additional questions or need a direction to start in, I'd be more than willing to help.

From your basic description, the simplest way to be to just have straight PHP with MySQL/postgresql. And I believe you mentioned in another response thinking about using a Raspberry Pi, it looks like a LAMP stack might be easiest to set up, so another point in favor of PHP.

The fortunate thing is that you have a fair amount of options when it comes to technologies for a web app. I personally have used php for years and have been working extensively with ruby and python recently. Here are some general things to consider.

Language choice.

For a long time PHP was the defacto standard. It has a lot of resources and tutorials plus the advantage of a huge amount of hosting options. However, I'm the last five to ten years, the field has opened up. Ruby and python both have strong communities and with app hosting solutions like Heroku, it is just as easy to get them up and running. All three are fine choices and if you're looking to make a career of web programming, you'll find plenty of jobs for all three.

Frameworks.

Frameworks are essentially scaffolding you can build your app around. The benefit is that you can get up and running pretty fast with them. Ruby has rails, python has django, and php has a plethora, with laravel being my favorite right now.

The downside of these is that they add another level of complexity to your app. In addition to learning the basics of a programming language, you also have to learn about routes,models, controllers, etc. While this information is very beneficial to have, it could overwhelm when you're just starting out.

If you want an app working fast, you can try one of the frameworks. However, if you want to understand the language more fully, at the cost of time, you may want to try your hand without a framework. If you do choose that route, php may be the best choice, since it was the only one designed specifically with web programming in mind. I'd reccomend php with mysql (using PDO for database interactions).

I'm currently on mobile right now, but if you'd like any more resources I can reply when I get to a real computer.

The lead programmer at my last job encouraged us to use it as a way to make sure our conditionals & foreach loops (PHP programmer) weren't doing too much. If we had to use braces, it was a sign to check it out and see if it could stand some refactoring.

It's a C-style language syntax option. If it's only a single line in after the if, the braces are optional. I've also seen it in C++ and PHP.

Whether or not it's sloppy is up for debate and just a matter of personal preference.