actually PG said it at the event, but to prob only a few people. It wasn't communicated well. Even though a simple e-mail, before hand could of explained everything.
Though I think they should have a special color sticker, for MBA's without programming/design skills, Managing Consultants and general Harvard douche-bags who think they are the smartest person in room.
"Amazon has also added a few unique twists of its own that will further improve the user experience. An Amazon engineer at the New York launch event told us that the split browsing infrastructure can even compile JavaScript to ARM machine code on the server side in situations where it will provide a speed boost. He also told us that Amazon will track whether users prefer the full or mobile versions of various websites so that they can predict which one is better to send to users."
EC2 servers have massive computational power. On EC2, available CPU, storage, and available memory can be orders of magnitudes larger than on mobile devices. Silk uses the power and speed of the EC2 server fleet to retrieve all of the components of a website simultaneously, and delivers them to Kindle Fire in a single, fast stream. Transferring computing-intensive tasks to EC2 helps to conserve your Kindle Fire battery life."
What does this mean? "Transferring computing-intensive tasks to EC2 helps to conserve your Kindle Fire battery life". Are we offloading javascripting processing to the cloud and returning the results?
PG was correct on everything he said about NYC. When I first heard him speak at the event, I thought he was going to talk fluff about how great NYC was, but he was honest. Every point he made was true.
It was inspiring. I really didn't hear anything new. But it was great to finally see PG and some of the other partners.
I would recommend going to one of these if it your first time. However, if you have attended, you should be heads down creating something, inStead of just going to another start up event.
the only thing I didn't like, is people interviewing you and then walking away without telling you anything.
It pretty much is a digital scrapbook. I think allot of FB users will like it. I personally don't see a need for it though.
However I can see the people who currently use scrapbooks and are on fb, really use it on fb.
As a business decision, I think it's a good one. It will keep some of their customers engaged. I am curious to which demographic will really like the feature.
I am banking that fb thinks that the "popular" users will really use it. By "popular" I mean user(s) in any fb graph, that have the most profile views from other users in that same graph. The users that in a fb graph, people want to keep up with the most.
Those users I think don't necessarily have to be early adopters. They are just popular.
FB as business to grow just has
1.) Maintain Users
2.) Have Current Users use the site more and create more content on it
That is probably why we are seeing more and more features to keep users engaged.
You should highlight, recent college graduates. If someone does get hired to your firm, I hope the "real world" problems are just as interesting.
I actually like those type of algorithmic problems you highlighted. I am not sure, what it measures other than the recent graduate knew his/her data structures and read their MIT Algorithms books really well. Very few jobs do require knowing that fundamentals that in depth. Are we writing a Kernel, or a file system? Are we writing a new type of java collection.
The type of real world problems that in the class of the 2 problem solving problems you mentioned seem far in few, unless you writing something new, that really needs to be optimized in some way.
I think this is a real problem with computer science schools. It great to teach the absolute bare essentials. But I think schools should also teach some modern programming and not leave it on the kids to learn on there own.
College grads that know modern frameworks, Node, ROR, they know javascript and ruby really well. They have written some nice web apps. Those are the ones with the best job perspective. They have proven they can do the work.
I can understand if you were interviewing for the core google search team. Their optimization's make the company money.
What type of candidate are you looking for? Obviously recent graduates will not have that much coding experience and reading comprehension.
Are you looking for someone to write new libraries from scratch? Who can implement new algorithms and data structures from nothing. Someone who can write new protocols and publish it to the team?
Are you looking for someone who can read your code base? Just fix bugs?
This one problem I keep seeing, many software companies don't know what to look for. Everyone wants that "smart and gets things done", but do you what things need to be done?
Ok, I didn't mean to offend you, I am sorry if I have.
That being said these are my thoughts on the subject of interviewing programmers.
When I just graduated college, I was all about puzzles and programming puzzles. My thoughts were that only people who could do these puzzles deserved programming jobs.
I was so wrong. Puzzles are something that you get or don't get. If your in an interview, and you haven't faced those combinatorial problems for a while, you could bomb, if someone asked you those questions.
Understood "fizzbuzz" problems are suppose to be the the lowest level of programming problems that any competent programmer can solve. If you want to fast screen candidates, go ahead and ask them.
When you get into problems, that require "tricks", either you get it or don't. It could be easy for some people and hard for others. There is no correlation of them getting it, to being good on the job, unless the problems are such that, the programmer will face them every day on the job.
Another good permutation problem, is subset sum problem. Come up with a program that determines if a array or list, can be partitioned into 2 non overlapping subsets, such that the the sum of both subsets equals each other. Print out both subsets if they are equal or state that it cannot be done. Is it possible to get better than O(n^2) for the optimal solution. That is fun one, but I don't think asking that would give you much insight into determining whether the programmer is fit or not.
I think interviewing is a really important task. It a really hard job to get right. If your a bad interviewer, the company you work for will eventually get a bad reputation.
Many software companies do not train people how to interview. That in our industry, is a huge problem.
There are many other things besides raw technical skills that will determine, how well the candidate will do at their job and at at the company.
Going over the candidate's experience in detail. Getting a feel for what they really want and expect from the job. Do you like the candidate's personality? What does your gut instinct say. What technical things do you need to ask that are relevant for that job, that you couldn't determine from the their experience? How would you design questions, relevant to the job at hand.
So do you have data to back up your claims that; answering those questions determine if your a good programmer.
Yes, there are tons of programming jobs out there, that don't require much of those skills. Not all jobs are that innovative.
Most of the development jobs I have seen require you to come up to speed with the code base fast. So it's that code reading comprehension that I think is most prevalent.
1/2x +1/2(1/2x + 1/2(1/2x +1/2(1/2x + ... = y
If x = 1,
then the equation likes this:
1/2 +1/2(1/2 + 1/2(1/2 +1/2(1/2 + ... = y
1/2 +1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + ... = y
y = 1 = x
y = x
Obviously, your rate would be low. The implied domain of the question would throw people off. The question isn't a good indicator if someone can program.
Why don't you ask your manager the following.
If 1/2x +1/2(1/2x + 1/2(1/2x +1/2(1/2x + ... = y,
then x = ?
If can't get it in 5 minutes, he is not fit for his job.
Let's say I interviewed you. I had asked to implement the fastest algorithm to give back the largest palindrome of words in English dictionary and compare it the largest palindrome of the french language. What the best solution you can come up with in 45 minutes.
After, that I asked you, write a simple ftp server, in the language of your choice. With your first solution, I asked you implement a SSL library and add it to the ftp server to make it sftp.
Based on that I can judge how good of a programmer you really are.
Sorry for being sarcastic, but I think most interviewers are on a power trip. They ask questions that if they heard for the first time, they couldn't come up with answers either.
I think your better off really talking about and going in depth with the programmers experience. If your experienced yourself, you should have no problem.
Objective is focus, so I will keep at the C networking, until I have some cool app from it.