{"id":11295,"date":"2008-06-05T17:29:01","date_gmt":"2008-06-05T14:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/?p=11295"},"modified":"2008-06-05T17:29:01","modified_gmt":"2008-06-05T14:29:01","slug":"follow-up-to-where-did-all-the-php-programmers-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2008\/06\/05\/follow-up-to-where-did-all-the-php-programmers-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Follow-up to “Where did all the PHP programmers go?”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is a quick follow-up to yesterday’s post – “Where did all the PHP programmers go?<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

First of all, let me take the moment and say “Wow!”.\u00a0 Somebody submitted the post to Reddit<\/a> and it made it to the front page and got an unbelievable amount of comments.\u00a0 Almost 500, and still coming.\u00a0 Thank you all.<\/p>\n

Secondly, the comments on this blog are fixed finally.\u00a0 Murphy’s Law in action – they got broken just before the wave came in and they got fixed shortly after.<\/p>\n

Thirdly, I should clear up a few things.\u00a0 My apologies for getting you guys confused.\u00a0 I never asked any candidate to compare sorting algorithms, much less to implement them.\u00a0 I asked to sort an array.\u00a0 I was expecting one of those PHP function calls in return.\u00a0 But I only got it a few times.\u00a0 Many candidates didn’t know how to sort an array (apparently they use MySQL to sort an array).\u00a0 A few suggested “bubble sort”.\u00a0 Probably thinking that the tasks for testing sorting algorithms.\u00a0 One even went as far as implementing a bubble sort in PHP.\u00a0 With pen and paper.\u00a0 This one was the toughest to decide about, by the way.<\/p>\n

Fourthly, the correction.\u00a0 The language is indeed called Ruby, not Ruby on Rails. I am aware of that.\u00a0 I was just trying to catch a thought.\u00a0 Thanks for pointing it out though.<\/p>\n

Fifthly, explanation for the pen and paper.\u00a0 Yes, I know that programmers are used to typing code.\u00a0 I know that they are used to their tools and online references.\u00a0 But.\u00a0 This is an interview.\u00a0 My time is limited and I have to make a decision.\u00a0 If I give all the tools and references to my mother, she will be able to solve the problem I am giving in reasonable time.\u00a0 She is not a PHP developer.\u00a0 She has no experience with PHP.\u00a0 But she has enough of common sense to do it.\u00a0 If I take everything away – she won’t be able to do that.\u00a0 But any semi-decent programmer will do.\u00a0 Further on, I am not feeding the resulting paper into the machine.\u00a0 The only parser that sees that code is the one embedded in my brain.\u00a0 And I assure you it is very tolerant to minor syntax errors and missing parameters.\u00a0 I want to see the process.\u00a0 The approach. Some data structures and algorithms.\u00a0 A bit of style in variable names, indentation, and empty lines, if I am lucky.\u00a0 That’s all.<\/p>\n

Sixthly, on the exercise itself.\u00a0 I like to think that I am pretty flexible with answers.\u00a0 For this particular exercise, a Perl programmer inside me thinks associative array is the best data structre.\u00a0 (And yes, before you start bashing further, I know that associative arrays in PHP aren’t the same as hashes in Perl.)\u00a0 I can accept an OOP solution just fine.\u00a0 What I find hard to accept is a single dimensional array with hopping over a pre-defined number of fields per record.<\/p>\n

Seventhly, this post, once it got to reddit and then furthermore to other news streams, generated more candidates and hints to where to find them, then all of my prevoius efforts.\u00a0 Thanks to all of you who sent me resumes, links, and pointers.\u00a0 My inbox is a bit overwhelmed right now, but I’ll reply to everyone over the next few days.<\/p>\n

Thanks a lot to all of you.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n

This is a quick follow-up to yesterday’s post – “Where did all the PHP programmers go?“. First of all, let me take the moment and say “Wow!”.\u00a0 Somebody submitted the post to Reddit and it made it to the front page and got an unbelievable amount of comments.\u00a0 Almost 500, and still coming.\u00a0 Thank you … Continue reading Follow-up to “Where did all the PHP programmers go?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,18,62],"tags":[1251,38,540],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-11295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-programming","category-technology","tag-interviews","tag-php","tag-vacancy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11290,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2008\/06\/04\/where-did-all-the-php-programmers-go\/","url_meta":{"origin":11295,"position":0},"title":"Where did all the PHP programmers go?","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"June 4, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"During the last six month or so, I've been looking to hire a PHP programmer for at least three companies.\u00a0 I have spoken to quite a few people on the phone, reviewed a bunch of resumes, and even interviewed a few.\u00a0 Out of all those candidates I recommended to hire\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11298,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2008\/06\/07\/programming-language-barrier\/","url_meta":{"origin":11295,"position":1},"title":"Programming language barrier","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"June 7, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the frequent things that I hear about programmers is that it doesn't matter which language the person is using and which language you need him to use, because if he is any good he'll learn and catch up pretty fast.\u00a0 In other words, if you take a decent\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9203,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2005\/07\/07\/upgraded-to-wordpress-1513\/","url_meta":{"origin":11295,"position":2},"title":"Upgraded to WordPress 1.5.1.3","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"July 7, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"I have finally upgraded to this blog to Wordpress 1.5.1.3. A couple of security issues with XML RPC are fixed by this release. I was a bit slow, since the fixes were released for over a week now, but not to worry - my PHP installation already had all the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10094,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2006\/04\/30\/all-is-fixed-finally\/","url_meta":{"origin":11295,"position":3},"title":"All is fixed. Finally.","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"April 30, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"It's been more than a month since my upgrade to WordPress 2.0.2. The upgrade went just fine, but it broke one important piece of functionality. I used to have a few pages that used PHP Exec plugin (things like the Archives and Blogroll). 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