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

[PuffinsAreFictitious]

Just starting this one as the last is nearly full

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? )

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?

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.

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

is it one you want fib?

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

Glad youre ok Buffy. Enjoy your break.

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 .

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.)

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.

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'

Hello all! Late night again....

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.

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

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.

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

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).

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.

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

I wrote a long post about brogrammers and stuff last night, and useless network failed to post it. And can't be bothered now.

If someone could send some sol to the Costa del Sol, that would be most appreciated, thank you.

I am enjoying your techy talk

FFS How have we ended up with 24 library books at home again!?

Hap me too, I think I'm a geek groupie.

LordC if DH got books out of the library we would do that. I have become addicted to World of Books and Books for a Better World since giving up Amazon as my New Year's resolution. Which is pricier than the library too. Not thought that through, have I?

I spent the afternoon doing hard work in the outdoors with 10 year old girls, and am pleasantly tired (clearing brambles at the campsite we're going to next weekend, with the Guides). They were all excellent sports.

I haven't bought books from Amazon for a while too. There was a website I used which sold secondhand books but they closed down recently, saying that they couldn't compete with kindle... :(

Was it Greenmetropolis? I was sad about them closing too. One day I'd ordered something and the next they closed. I did get the order though.

The two I mentioned are more ethical than some of the others (irritatingly ABE Books which has loads of stuff and a really good search feature is affiliated with Amazon).