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0 pointsQuarrelsome3d ago0 comments

I had been sole technical owner for many distributed solutions for industry, as well as responsible for like ~20% of code running my nations transportation infrastructure before I learned how to quit vim. So that makes me think you're full of shit and lack the imagination to consider any other paths except your own.

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johnisgood3d ago

Are you telling me that when you got vim opened, you panicked and could not figure it out in a relatively short timeframe?

FWIW I still maintain the belief that it is usually a decent indicator of whether you have got the experience to work through unfamiliar tools. It is often a good sign, although not a guarantee.

QuarrelsomeOP3d ago

When vim auto opened the bloke next to me doing my induction told me I needed to type ":wq" and then made a joke about how unintuitive it is.

> FWIW I still maintain the belief that it is usually a decent indicator of whether you have got the experience to work through unfamiliar tools

if you just said that in the first place I'd agree, but that's different. Good engineers are brave and able to just dive into some unknown to get the job done. I'm sure there's been plenty of times where we've been thrust into scenarios where we have to use unfamiliar tech to solve an issue or throw up some infra. However, personally I've never _had_ to use vi, so its not come up, but that's probably because my background is very much a windows one, not a linux/unix one.

johnisgood3d ago

Fair enough.

> Good engineers are brave and able to just dive into some unknown to get the job done.

I agree. We (I) do it all the time.

Just to circle back on the "pop quiz" point: do we agree that asking loosely relevant trivia questions is not the most effective way to assess ability? I would argue it is more meaningful to be given a task and the space to solve it. To be honest, I do not know how to implement heapsort off the top of my head, but I know how to look up its pseudocode and how it works, and from there, I can translate that into working code.

> that's probably because my background is very much a windows one, not a linux/unix one.

Yes, that explains it. I find no issue with that at all. What matters is the ability to bridge gaps when needed.

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johnisgood3d ago

Are you telling me that when you got vim opened, you panicked and could not figure it out in a relatively short timeframe?

FWIW I still maintain the belief that it is usually a decent indicator of whether you have got the experience to work through unfamiliar tools. It is often a good sign, although not a guarantee.

QuarrelsomeOP3d ago

When vim auto opened the bloke next to me doing my induction told me I needed to type ":wq" and then made a joke about how unintuitive it is.

> FWIW I still maintain the belief that it is usually a decent indicator of whether you have got the experience to work through unfamiliar tools

johnisgood3d ago

Fair enough.

> Good engineers are brave and able to just dive into some unknown to get the job done.

I agree. We (I) do it all the time.

> that's probably because my background is very much a windows one, not a linux/unix one.

Yes, that explains it. I find no issue with that at all. What matters is the ability to bridge gaps when needed.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse