IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.

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Deathwing

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Off topic: has anyone dealt with Ubuntu 14.04 going LTS last week? We have some OLD docker containers that can no longer run because some of the packages are now locked behind a paywall. I'm trying to determine if the best method is painstakingly move the containers to Ubuntu 16 or....find the packages somewhere else?!?!
 
Noodleface

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I was worried but we have strict control over how it's accessed and I changed all the accesor and otherwise.public functions to be hard cast returns based on image type. The only thing I'm worried about is i couldn't tell if it's a genius move on a dumbass first year student move
 
Noodleface

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I ended up not asking coding questions really. I ended up picking whatever project/job they had listed that I thought was the most applicable and had them draw out block diagrams, state diagrams, or class diagrams depending on what it was. Then I had them talk about what went into the design, how it was working on a team, what lead to certain decisions, etc. Kind of boilerplate, but for sophomores and juniors I think it went ok.
 
wormie

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Noodleface said:
I ended up not asking coding questions really. I ended up picking whatever project/job they had listed that I thought was the most applicable and had them draw out block diagrams, state diagrams, or class diagrams depending on what it was. Then I had them talk about what went into the design, how it was working on a team, what lead to certain decisions, etc. Kind of boilerplate, but for sophomores and juniors I think it went ok.
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But Noodle, what if they can't solve the longest substring problem in O(n^2)???
 
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sadris

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Noodleface Noodleface has been arrested:

Many IT workers worry their positions will become obsolete as changes in hardware, software, and computing tasks outstrip their skills. A former contractor for Siemens concocted a remedy for that—plant logic bombs in projects he designed that caused them to periodically malfunction. Then wait for a call to come fix things.

On Monday, David A. Tinley, a 62-year-old from Harrison City, Pennsylvania, was sentenced to six months in prison and a fine of $7,500 in the scheme.

Contractor admits planting logic bombs in his software to ensure he’d get new work
 
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Noodleface

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I hate waiting around. I've got 3 stories where my code is in some nebulous state while I wait for others to complete work. Can't commit because I can't test. Frustratingn
 
TJT

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I wrote a bunch of code for like 7 stories months ago. Whenever I get to the point where the stakeholders want it deployed some bullshit comes up and I have to revise it a ton... then wait around. This has happened like 4 times. Supposed to go live this week and NOPE. Same shit.
 
ShakyJake

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I'm being thrown on a story to help this dude who has been working on it for four months. Should've taken, at most, two. Unfortunately, it's not the type of story that can support more than one developer. We'll probably end up stepping on each other's toes.
 
Noodleface

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TJT said:
I wrote a bunch of code for like 7 stories months ago. Whenever I get to the point where the stakeholders want it deployed some bullshit comes up and I have to revise it a ton... then wait around. This has happened like 4 times. Supposed to go live this week and NOPE. Same shit.
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They made this big song and dance about our new security feature - we need the BIOS support immediately. IM. MED. IAT. ELY.

Finished that up months ago only to be told they won't be ready until mid February.
 
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Khane

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Shelved code is the bane of my existence. I hate having to come back to something that was completed, or nearly completed months ago after having forgotten most of what I had accomplished or what deployment will look like.
 
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TJT

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You and me both dude. Every time I crack open that code I'm all... Okay what the fuck did I do again?
 
Lendarios

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ShakyJake said:
I'm being thrown on a story to help this dude who has been working on it for four months. Should've taken, at most, two. Unfortunately, it's not the type of story that can support more than one developer. We'll probably end up stepping on each other's toes.
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If it is going to take 2 months to complete, it certainly supports more than 1 developer.
 
Lendarios

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ShakyJake said:
It's difficult because the stories are very sequential and highly dependent upon the previous story.
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Normally you can start at both ends of a story, one guy on the back, and done guy on the front. That is the most common approach.

Also making assumptions is good, so you assume your halfway point to be X, then second guy start there, so first guy takes it to X, second guy takes it from X forward, both working at the same time, and if you end up on X', instead of X that is OK, minor tweaks is all you need.

2 months is a lot of time in development world. Honestly it could have been split.

Once you are done, with the thing re-evaluate where it could have been separated for two guys. At least you can learn from that for future stories. Also anything scheduled for more than 3 weeks is not really a good approximation. I'm about to complete a project that was scheduled for 2 months, total real time almost 1 year, because things keep changing constantly and well coding is hard.


We are really bad at estimating things that take more than 3 weeks
 
ShakyJake

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Lendarios said:
Normally you can start at both ends of a story, one guy on the back, and done guy on the front. That is the most common approach.

Also making assumptions is good, so you assume your halfway point to be X, then second guy start there, so first guy takes it to X, second guy takes it from X forward, both working at the same time, and if you end up on X', instead of X that is OK, minor tweaks is all you need.

2 months is a lot of time in development world. Honestly it could have been split.

Once you are done, with the thing re-evaluate where it could have been separated for two guys. At least you can learn from that for future stories. Also anything scheduled for more than 3 weeks is not really a good approximation. I'm about to complete a project that was scheduled for 2 months, total real time almost 1 year, because things keep changing constantly and well coding is hard.


We are really bad at estimating things that take more than 3 weeks
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Yeah, for us our acceptance criteria is usually vague. I'm not sure how other software houses are, but our scrum masters aren't technical at all. They are basically glorified secretaries that add stuff to our backlog, pull stories into the current sprint, etc. It's often up to the developer to write the AC which, in my opinion, shouldn't be this way. I feel like I should be told, "This is the story. This is how this should work." We usually end up revisiting stories because we never had a full grasp of how things should work to begin with.
 
Noodleface

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I would imagine a story that is 2 months worth of dev work can be broken up into smaller pieces
 
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ShakyJake

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Noodleface said:
I would imagine a story that is 2 months worth of dev work can be broken up into smaller pieces
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These are device communication interfaces. So imagine work where you have one story where you handle initial communication with a device. Another story would be something like downloading information from the device. So how can one dev work on the download portion when the initial communication piece doesn't exist? And it's totally not practical to have two devs work on initial comm. Sure, if there was a UI component then yes. But in this case this is purely back-end work.
 
Noodleface

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ShakyJake said:
These are device communication interfaces. So imagine work where you have one story where you handle initial communication with a device. Another story would be something like downloading information from the device. So how can one dev work on the download portion when the initial communication piece doesn't exist? And it's totally not practical to have two devs work on initial comm. Sure, if there was a UI component then yes. But in this case this is purely back-end work.
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I think you could get 90% of the way there asking for an interface from slowdev and using a spec for the device
 
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