There’s nothing to memorize, it’s very basic math. Though I can imagine self-taught web/UI developers having no idea about math and doing there job just fine. So in my opinion it would be a very good thing to ask from someone applying for C/C++ job involving writing fast and efficient code, but if it’s like integrating 20 year old 5M line PHP monstrosity with Cassandra, then it’s useless indeed
On the other hand, most C/C++ developers don't spend a big part of their day writing algorithms to convert from decimal to binary and anybody can easily find the algorithm online, so I wouldn't expect even someone who's been working with embedded software in C for the past twenty years to necessarily have the algorithm memorized. I still think it's a worthless interview question.
it's not about that particular algorithm, it's about weeding out devs who cannot come up with something as basic as decimal-to-binary conversion. A former boss of mine used questions like "What year did the First World War start?" to cut, well, not enough intelligent people off - worked pretty well actually
I disagree with either of these types of questions being used to measure a person's intelligence. Lack of knowledge is not the same thing as lack of intelligence. As a thought experiment: What if Leonardo DaVinci were asked to answer either of those questions? He would not have access to our knowledge of history and most likely not the mathematical experience converting numbers to different base systems. I don't think most people would consider his contributions any less significant or that he was less intelligent because he didn't know some random tidbit of knowledge.
A former boss of mine used questions like "What year did the First World War start?" to cut, well, not enough intelligent people off - worked pretty well actually
Why would a history quiz be on a programming job interview and be used to judge intelligence? I consider myself pretty well versed on history and I don't even know the answer to that. Why would the year Franz Ferdinand was shot be relevant at all to the job?
@phillip
What makes you think Leonardo would be a good software developer? :) @mike
It was just a quick test if the person was actually learning something during his high school years. Also it was in Russia, for the US you might want to replace it with something more culturally relevant as people born/raised outside Europe are usually pretty hopeless at European history (unless there was a movie or music band)
Oof, history was never a good topic for me. That's why I got into tech and not studying history. That'd be a great way to weed me out of wanting to work for a place, asking me history questions during a technical interview. lol
Software engineer mostly in the area of science and research. I spent 10 years developing software and solutions in the field of seismology and now I am working in the field of quantum computing.
Sure it's basic, but if you don't do it all the time or had to do it all the time it might not be obvious to you. I saw this a lot in college. I double majored in EE and CS so I got to see the CS stduents struggle with very basic EE stuff in some classes and EE students struggle with basic C coding as well.
As an EE major converting between binary, hex, and decimal as well as understanding things like registers, low level memory management etc was easy for me when it came up in CS classes, but it was all new or not so easy for the CS majors since it isnt something they had to deal with all the time.
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There’s nothing to memorize, it’s very basic math. Though I can imagine self-taught web/UI developers having no idea about math and doing there job just fine. So in my opinion it would be a very good thing to ask from someone applying for C/C++ job involving writing fast and efficient code, but if it’s like integrating 20 year old 5M line PHP monstrosity with Cassandra, then it’s useless indeed
On the other hand, most C/C++ developers don't spend a big part of their day writing algorithms to convert from decimal to binary and anybody can easily find the algorithm online, so I wouldn't expect even someone who's been working with embedded software in C for the past twenty years to necessarily have the algorithm memorized. I still think it's a worthless interview question.
it's not about that particular algorithm, it's about weeding out devs who cannot come up with something as basic as decimal-to-binary conversion. A former boss of mine used questions like "What year did the First World War start?" to cut, well, not enough intelligent people off - worked pretty well actually
I disagree with either of these types of questions being used to measure a person's intelligence. Lack of knowledge is not the same thing as lack of intelligence. As a thought experiment: What if Leonardo DaVinci were asked to answer either of those questions? He would not have access to our knowledge of history and most likely not the mathematical experience converting numbers to different base systems. I don't think most people would consider his contributions any less significant or that he was less intelligent because he didn't know some random tidbit of knowledge.
Why would a history quiz be on a programming job interview and be used to judge intelligence? I consider myself pretty well versed on history and I don't even know the answer to that. Why would the year Franz Ferdinand was shot be relevant at all to the job?
@phillip What makes you think Leonardo would be a good software developer? :)
@mike It was just a quick test if the person was actually learning something during his high school years. Also it was in Russia, for the US you might want to replace it with something more culturally relevant as people born/raised outside Europe are usually pretty hopeless at European history (unless there was a movie or music band)
Oof, history was never a good topic for me. That's why I got into tech and not studying history. That'd be a great way to weed me out of wanting to work for a place, asking me history questions during a technical interview. lol
I bet you're fun at parties.
Sure it's basic, but if you don't do it all the time or had to do it all the time it might not be obvious to you. I saw this a lot in college. I double majored in EE and CS so I got to see the CS stduents struggle with very basic EE stuff in some classes and EE students struggle with basic C coding as well.
As an EE major converting between binary, hex, and decimal as well as understanding things like registers, low level memory management etc was easy for me when it came up in CS classes, but it was all new or not so easy for the CS majors since it isnt something they had to deal with all the time.