> On Aug 12, 2016, at 1:13 PM, Mattias Andrée <maand...@kth.se> wrote: > > On Fri, 12 Aug 2016 22:05:26 +0200 > Martin Kühne <mysat...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Fri, Aug 12, 2016 at 9:58 PM, Mattias Andrée >> <maand...@kth.se> wrote: >>> Programming contests can be fun, but it depends on the >>> competition, some barely have a focus on programming >>> but mathematics instead. I don't see them as promoting >>> bad practices, you are under extraordinary pressure so >>> this should not influence your programming practices >>> under normal conditions. I don't think the skills, that >>> are generally useful for programming contests, are >>> generally useful in other contexts. I hope recruiters >>> realise the differences in programming competitions and >>> what the employee will be doing, but that has merits >>> similar to any other contests, mathematics skills, and >>> other problem solving skills such as solving puzzles. >>> It shows competitive attitude and cognitive >>> capabilities. >> >> >> I even see programming skills wrt free / open source >> projects different to those an employer would expect. An >> employer sooner says they're disappointed of somebody's >> performance, while my personally growing patchset may >> never actually ripen to be submitted to upstream for all >> the various reasons. Maybe it's my own code that sucks, >> but maybe it's the project's design decisions or upstream >> maintainer's understanding which is incompatible with the >> work. Nobody has to be loyal to anybody else in these >> matters, which I see as a core feature of these things. >> >> cheers! >> mar77i > > Agreed. > > Noone should be fooled to thinking that hobby programming, > which free software and open source projects often are, > is representative of a typical programming job. And because > of the time pressure in programming contests, programming > contests are closer (although not that much) to a normal > programming job than hobby programming.
The collaborative environment of open source projects is very important for a typical programming job, and shows ability across a wide variety of challenges and conditions. Also, I typically find that I am needing my juniors to slow down and my seniors to speed up. So if a junior is going fast, I likely won't like the result. But if someone is winning contest after contest, surely they probably have something of value. I would then ask to see their open source work to get a more complete picture.