I'm looking at refining my interview pieces as our company moves ahead and the question that keeps popping in my head is whether “Do you blog” is useful in feeling out a programmer's desire.
Disclaimer: By placing this question on a blog, I risk asking the choir what they think. However I think the question is valid and merits discussion.
Ideally a question has a yes/no right/wrong answer for the sake of HR, but in an interview we are also trying to get a sense of fitness for the job. I believe that every great programmer I've worked with has something to share with the software community - and they know it. Some call it arrogance, some call it confidence, but ultimately a programmer desires to (1) make something unique and innovative and (2) have their code run on as many machines as possible. Without confidence a programmer won't test the limits of the technology available and look around for new ways to solve problems. A programmer who fails to desire these traits resorts to being a simple coder/scripter. If an interviewee said “I have a blog”, I would read it top to bottom and I'm sure it would reveal materials that reach far beyond the scope of the 1 hour technical interview.
Back in the 90's I used the “have you read Code Complete” question as a springboard into a lot of insight and discussion. I think that “Do you Blog” has the potential to bring out a lot of the same insight. Does this person desire to turn out the best code possible? Does the programmer look to others in developing their own skill? Does the programmer contribute effectively with other developers?
What do you think?
I've been using sourcesafe over VPN and the performance is slow. In fact, slow is being optimistic. Given that our upload speeds are 300kb, a smarter tool is needed. Can anyone recommend one of the SourceSafe add-on/replacement products that work well over the web? My only criteria is the same integration into Visual Studio.NET 2003 that I enjoy with SourceSafe.
Thanks
A friend of mine and I are working on a new project in our spare time. The application is based on a common past time (fantasy sports) and it's a lot of fun. I've had a version of the program running for the past 4 years written entirely in C++/MFC and roles a persistence model that is entirely proprietary. The rewrite expands the scope drastically and we've been going back and forth on the initial spec. This has been a lot of fun.
In the meantime, we have the webservices running and data persistence(XML based of course)/data model complete for the first phase of development. Everything is being driven by the tests (NUnit). Right now I'm working with the dotMSN library to prove out a concept in the application (so far I'm really liking the library). I was looking for a .net library that worked with MSN Messenger and I have to say “thanks” to Kirk Marple for leading me to it.
I am working with a company that has a number of offsite integrators and sales reps. All but 2 of our implementations have been within Minnesota (our home state). In order to keep track of things that are happening and improve communication, we are opening up an internal blog site. Our integrators are all engineers (non-software) and I think the posts will make for fun reading. I see this as a chance to jump outside the software realm and get a better feel for what's happening in the field at the same time.