Feminist Pub XVIII, in which the Bluestocking greets the first signs of spring with a glass of something soothing

Still name changes fairly regularly so may well have done so again.

I'm wondering about Still, haven't seen anything since several people (with me abetting) criticised her posting tone, so I think we might have scared her off . She was about my level of feminist knowledge and I can cope with a few thorns. I'd be happier if I knew she'd just namechanged.

Errol, Pickle, thanks! The way I am approaching this is: if the interviewer is a good interviewer indeed, they will be looking for analytical and problem solving skills rather than syntax details. If they are a bad interviewer, then it doesn't matter because I might, indeed, not want to work there (I do have reservations although obviously it would look good on resume).

Morning all! Anyone heard from Still at all? Has she gone underground?

at Errol's "woman".

I have an old friend who keeps posting parenting how-tos on FB. I've blocked his posts about cancer cures (drink 5 glasses of water for breakfast etc etc Wow. So easy.). I think I may have to block these ones too.

Forgot to say good luck Fib, and good luck with the prep too.

At the beginning of the year I went through a series (5 or 6) of technical tests for a huge company (got the job, turned it down for a number of reasons) - a couple I thought I'd fluffed terribly, but it turns out the interviewer just had that demeanor in interviews and it was standard practise to push the interviewee until they couldn't answer any more - both to find their boundaries, and to see how they deal when they don't know something.

I was totally worth the preparation though (basics, problem solving in general) - in fact that's probably the best way to approach these things, as a huge game that you're trying to get as far through as possible.

Hello all! Late night again....

A lot of my code is written by cutting and pasting from bits which do similar things to what I want (in house code or found by googling) because I'm very good at what I do and reinventing wheels is a sign of a rank amateur . And with proper languages it really doesn't matter too much if you make a syntax error because the compiler will spot it. The important thing when writing code is the content.

I always used to find 'man' irritating to use (it's a bit better nowadays), so wrote a jiffy to dump into a file so I could peruse more easily. Obviously this was Write Out Manual - 'woman'

Yes, exactly! Some interviewers will fail you because you can't quite remember the syntax, which is silly because I know programmers who can churn out incredibly innefficient syntactically correct code. Also, while I understand there are several typical algorithms I need to be familiar with, and patterns, I frankly look it up every time I have to implement a bubble sort algorithm, which in real life is...oh wait, never.

I usually fail on the techy test, too. Partly because in real life, if I get the syntax wrong and it doesn't do what I expect, I check the man pages (short for manual, but obviously there are lots of witticisms around commands like man and strip and mount, because unix was mostly written by men.)

I don't know, HapShawl. On one hand, it is one of THE software houses people would kill to work for. On the other hand, I suspect/fear brogrammer culture. And on the third hand, their technical test is pretty tough and that is what I will fail miserably next week. So it could be a very uncomfortable hour trying to remember my very lapsed Java grammmar while some male engineer looks down his nose at my confirmation that women just aren't good coders .

Glad youre ok Buffy. Enjoy your break.

Hi Buffy, glad you're still with us! Come back soon!

is it one you want fib?

I have a pile of dreaded stuff to do. And it keeps getting bigger and bigger.

I should follow Buffy's example and take a break from MN for a bit but I bet I don't

Errol My pile of dreaded stuff are stuff I normally would love to do. I'm just tired and a bit under the weather, I think. Hey ho. Will do them at extra speed on Monday. And yes, I remember that Buffy used to be reasonable, then she became something else, and now she's the episwhatsit.

Good luck fibonacci!

Now I'm off to the park to round up the DC.

waves hi! I've just agreed to do an interview on Thursday for which I'm woefully underprepared. At least it will be good practice?

Wasn't one of Buffy's nns once 'BuffyTheReasonableFeminist' - something like that anyway and it fitted perfectly. (but so does epistiwhotsit. Is it just me or does anyone else tend to misread epistemology as episiotomy when encountered on MN threads? )

Errol - so true!

Glad to see that Buffy is still around, I always found her reasonable.

There's two things you can do with piles of dread. One is to say to yourself 'no-one else is going to do it for me' and get on with it. The other is to leave it all till the last possible minute with that dready feeling going on (especially in the middle of the night when you can't do anything about it anyway, don't you find?). Often as not when I'm MN-ing I'm using the latter strategy.

I have done a puzzle.

No stats for me. I can't face numbers. I have a pile of stuff to do that fills me with dread. And they are not even bad things.

But my lunch is delicious, burnt garlic and all.

Phew, thank goodness for that! Have a good one (if I haven't wrecked it already).

So I decided to go and cook myself an early lunch. I set off the fire alarm. On balance it's probably safer if someone does entertain me.