deanproxy

The lack of ability to look at documentation/stackoverflow/code examples in a browser while simultaneously coding out said example and making the changes I need would severely limit my productivity. "Just copy and paste!" you may say... Sure, that'll work. Only, wait, I forgot what that one line meant, is it needed? What did they say about changing this piece of code that was "really important?" Crap, back to the browser. Let's switch apps again. Crap, the page in the browser is having to reload because I had too many tabs open and memory got low, now I have to wait for it to reload. Where was I on the page? Cause when it reloaded the page, it put me back at the top. Wait, that wasn't the tab I wanted, it's that other tab. Great! It has to reload now too!

I typically work with a single external monitor connected to my Macbook and use the Macbook for holding my mail client, chat and a browser while my Terminal's and IDE are on the external monitor. This works best for me.

Now that spaces and expose are so tied together, working with even just one screen is much nicer. I have toyed with the idea of just using a single external monitor and use spaces extensively. Just a swipe and I'm at a new space. This is much faster and nicer than changing apps on iOS.

I think it's a neat trial idea, but for long term productivity, it certainly is more of a "hipster factor" than useful.

I guess it's a matter of perception. If I'm going to have a child, I'm basically giving up my lifestyle of travel, going out wherever/whenever I want, spending money on what I want, eating out all the time, etc... In order to provide for that child. This is selfish activity, as far as I'm concerned. However, this is how my wife and I live at the moment. We don't want a child ruining our fun! :)

This is hilarious because this is exactly what both my wife and I think and we would have said exactly the same thing as you just did.

I think some people are geared for it. Some people are not. Unfortunately, a lot of people that aren't geared for it still end up having children anyway and that becomes a huge mess, obviously.

I personally just don't like children. My family begs my wife and I to have children and it annoys us to no extent. We understand the complexities of having a child and we also understand how selfish we currently are. We would probably end up despising the child if we ever had one.

We go through periods at times where we'll see a baby and be like "aw, how cute", but that quickly changes when that child starts screaming and crying.

I can't even stand my nieces and nephews. I'm serious... I hate holidays because I know I'll have to put up with them. This sounds harsh, sure... but it's the truth. All I see out of them is a mass quantity of pure concentrated annoyance. While I love them because they are family, I simply don't want to be around them. If they ever needed help, I'd help them. If they ever needed a home, I'd house them... I'd be there for them because they're family and that's what family is there for... however, nobody said I had to like them!

Our views may change, obviously. As you get older, your priorities change and we both may have different opinions. However, we're both in our mid thirties and time is not on our side anymore and we still, to this day, feel that not having children was a great idea.

As far as the 51/49 split, I'd personally say I feel that way with my dog. :) However, when I want to get away from my dog, I crate her and go out to dinner!

He has a family that he left behind. His wife and children. If your father just passed away 48 hours ago, would you want to read about how somebody is glad that he's finally gone? I sure wouldn't... It's called respect.

I agree with some of what you said here, and maybe i have misunderstood what you're trying to convey, but allow me this little rant here...

Some of it seems excessive. I've been developing in C and Java for 11 years now. I make a tad under $100k and live in Atlanta, Ga. I have yet to need to know or discuss failure modes of the GC by heart, how to detect them and work around them by heart, how the JVM team did generics and possible alternatives, nor to know keyboard shortcuts by heart. I have however come across these things in my career and had to takle them. Guess what I did? Googled. Then I got back to writing code, what my job soley exists for.

It seems absurd that any company would require these things. If I was interviewed at a company asking me to talk about these things in the interview, I would walk out simply because I would feel it was completely irrelevant to how good of a software engineer I am. I really hate being interviewed by people who are more interested in asking obscure questions that just want to prove how smart they are (when we all know they probably just looked up that question/answer before the interview), rather than talk to me about coding and problem solving.

Things like memory use, basic algorithms, what design patterns are, collections, code quality, software development life cycle, unit testing, general coding problems, maybe some things about hibernate (if you use it), basic database knowledge, their favorite language and why and let's not forget overall personality and how they will fit into your team are far more important areas to cover. Not some obscure questions that will be used maybe once in your lifetime or on extremely rare occasions at the new job that can also be looked up on google when you need an answer for that rare occasion.

I even shutter when I think about design patterns being discussed because they're so over used and bad developers focus way too much on putting well known ones into their code base even when it may not be called for and just create so much more bloat for no good reason other than to feel like they're smart. An understanding of design patterns is great, but forcing people to describe any of them but the well known basics is just dumb.

The interviews my team gives exist around these things and I can honestly say we have yet to hire someone that didn't know their stuff very well and fit into the team nicely from the start.

I have only been without a job for a max of 3 months when I was laid off once and I have job hopped a lot, especially in my early career (which, there is a dirty secret there... That's how you make more money when you're staring off!). I have walked out in the middle of interviews before when it was clear that the person was asking obscure questions just to feel superior. I don't want to work with people like that...

Interviewers need to focus more on asking questions that software engineers face on a daily basis and less on odd and obscure things that can easily be researched in a short amount of time online when and if the problem ever presents itself.

I apologize if I got off topic or missed your point entirely. I was just having a conversation with someone about this very thing and it seemed relevant based on what I read.