nanog mailing list archives
Re: Programmers with network engineering skills
From: Lamar Owen <lowen () pari edu>
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 14:51:00 -0500
On Tuesday, February 28, 2012 09:03:33 AM John Mitchell wrote:
One of the tests I give all interviewees is write a very short program in a language they have never ever used before
I typically recommend either Intercal, or one of various assembler languages that are out of date (well, not really out of date, but out of date for mainstream computing. My old TRS-80 Z80 assembler skills come in handy when playing around with certain DVD drives' firmware, since a Z80 variant is used in many such drives). Make 'em do something in 6502 that absolutely has to use page zero stuff, or in Z80 where a block instruction would be the best way to accomplish a task. Or maybe handcoded ia64, or MIPS, the 6502's godgrandchildren.... Object shmobject, let me see the bytes! And if they choose to try it in Intercal, they have to use at least two COME FROM statements. In a 'Hello World' type program (of course, 'Hello World' in Intercal is, well, interesting, and reads like an obfuscated perl contest entry. The point being, if you can make something useful happen in Intercal, you can probably do something useful in a sane language. The skills I'm looking for are simple: be able to think sideways, and on your feet, with unfamiliar tools if necessary. That is, be a quick study who doesn't cringe at any language, tool, toolkit, or technique that might need to be used.
Current thread:
- Re: Programmers with network engineering skills, (continued)
- Re: Programmers with network engineering skills Robert E. Seastrom (Feb 29)
- RE: Programmers with network engineering skills Jamie Bowden (Feb 28)
- Re: Programmers with network engineering skills Jeroen van Aart (Feb 28)
- RE: Programmers with network engineering skills George Bonser (Feb 28)
- Re: Programmers with network engineering skills Lamar Owen (Feb 28)
- Re: Programmers with network engineering skills George Herbert (Feb 28)
- Re: Programmers with network engineering skills Keegan Holley (Feb 28)
- Re: Programmers with network engineering skills Owen DeLong (Feb 28)
- Re: Programmers with network engineering skills Peter Kristolaitis (Feb 28)
- RE: Programmers with network engineering skills Brandt, Ralph (Feb 28)
- Re: Programmers with network engineering skills Rodrick Brown (Feb 28)
- RE: Programmers with network engineering skills George Bonser (Feb 28)
- Re: Programmers with network engineering skills Ray Soucy (Feb 28)