When Requirements Are Technically Correct

Content I've interviewed a lot of people over the last year (Java), and my favorite test is to throw a Stack Trace at them and ask them to figure out what the problem is. The answer is actually quite clear, however. Half of them don't know it's called a stack trace. Some don't know what they're looking at (BYE!). Several focus on the wrong section of proprietary code. Some ask to "open a debugger". however the answer is right there in plain english if you just read the method names. Many don't realize the line numbers are RIGHT THERE, and then start focusing on the lines ending with "Compiled Code". Then there are the ones who work their way up from the bottom, starting with the application container code, and lose their minds. Some who figure out what is happening don't have a solution to prevent it from happening. No, I'm not sharing the trace; suffice to say it's been reviewed by more than 5 of my peers and they all passed. Like Reply 1h Edited I mean, it isn't hard to eliminate people with a coding question. Do you find it impossible to teach people how to read text stack traces, or is this a skill without which they will be unable to do anything of use, or do you just not want to hire anyone? 1 am serious. 1 can come up with dozens of useful programming skills I can test a candidate on that most perfectly skilled programmers would fail. Start with eliminating people who can't code at all. Then find out what they can do that could be useful. If I have 5 people who can already take a printed out stack crash dump, I probably don't need another, and if I do, a qualified candidate can be taught that skill by someone who knows it in under a week. Then again, maybe you work for Stack Trace Inc, and your entire job is looking at stack traces. If so, by bad. Like Reply 22m

Ah yes, the classic "I'll just give a positive review and nothing else" approach. When your boss asks for feedback, but your keyboard mysteriously only types thumbs up emojis and the occasional letters that spell "tgIm." After seven years as a senior dev, I've mastered the art of saying absolutely nothing while appearing enthusiastic. Career preservation at its finest. Why risk an honest opinion when you can just 👍👍👍 your way to your next performance review?

You spend months crafting your code, push it to GitHub, and then... silence. Complete radio silence. Until that fateful day when someone creates an issue about something completely unrelated to your code's actual purpose. It's like inviting people to your house and the only feedback you get is "your doorbell is slightly off-center." Thanks for noticing the 2,000 lines of meticulously documented code though!

Ah yes, programming constructs manifested as hardware. Multiple USB adapters stacked like a desperate chain of conditional logic. A power strip with switches for each outlet because sometimes you need fine-grained control. And that power strip eating its own tail? Classic infinite loop - the electricity equivalent of forgetting your exit condition. That extension cord will keep powering itself until the heat death of the universe or your circuit breaker trips, whichever comes first.

Content I am now in possession of the magic phone that never stops ringing

The semicolon - that tiny punctuation mark that turns a broken compiler into a working program. First-year CS students are blissfully unaware that their code won't run because they forgot a semicolon, while simultaneously not understanding why adding one magically fixes everything. The best part? They'll spend 3 hours debugging only to find they're missing a single character that experienced devs spot in 0.2 seconds. Welcome to programming, kids - where your entire project can fail because you didn't end a line with a winky eye!