Re: [tlug] New programming revision site - by a TLUG'er

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

黒鉄章 writes:
 > 2010/8/11 Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@example.com>
 > 
 > > > Having discussed this many times I think that we all share this
 > >  > idea, that it's not worth taxing your memory with minor
 > >  > details. That's what I said.  That's what all my friends and
 > >  > colleagues said.
 > >
 > > Did you attend a Japanese high school and college?
 > 
 > No, I grew up in Australia and migrated here. Why do you ask?

Because in the Japanese educational system, if you don't fill your
memory with minor details, you will not make it out the other end.  If
your potential boss is Japanese, s/he'll be expecting mastery of the
details.  If you were raised here, you might pay lip service to the
value of knowing where to find information rather than memorizing it
yourself, but you certainly wouldn't expect to get a job without
memorizing those details.  That's mostly Japan-specific, but both
China and Korea lean in that direction.

 > Ahem. Cough. I omitted this before but I was an expert in the
 > things being tested. This site I have made is not for learning, but
 > for revising. I *was* an expert

... but had difficulty proving it, because it had been a while since
you'd actually done that kind of work with that language.

I have a friend who claims that he worked for Rover back in the day,
and when he arrived in this country he applied for a job at Toyota.
When they said, "what can you do?", he replied, "your biggest problem
now [ca. 1986] is you don't have a minivan for the U.S. market.  Give
me some paper and two hours, and I'll show you one."  And he did, in
his words "right down to the door locks," and apparently they were
mighty upset that when they didn't offer him what he wanted and he got
up and left, he took those designs with him.  (This is all told by the
protagonist, so take it with a grain of salt.  Still, that's the way
to do a job interview. :-)

 > If you wish to say programming _fluency_ is an a employment issue,
 > then I take this as a confirmation that the site is doing a good
 > thing.

No, I'm saying being in current practice in the systems used by a
prospective employer is an employment issue, and being a once and
future expert is a handicap in today's market (and probably any time's
market).  "Fluency" is part of that, but you also need to be current
on the kinds of problems people in the field are trying to solve
nowadays, and what the conventional approaches are, etc.

I'm warning that although your site may help to improve fluency, and
that's one stumbling block you can hurdle that way, job seekers also
need to update their sense of what "any practitioner should know" to
match the job they're applying for.  That includes stuff like what
IDEs, frameworks, and libraries are in favor, of course, but might
also include being familiar with appropriate industry blogs, too.