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If you’ve ever applied for certain programming positions within the government, you may have had to complete an “Experience Record Questionnaire”. This questionnaire consists of a series of questions that require a paragraph or more to answer and is designed to show your technical knowledge, problem solving skills, etc. One of the questions/statements may be something like “Describe a challenging situation or work period when you have worked independently without supervision”. I recently completed one of these questionnaires (after they accepted my resume), and I’d like to include a few excerpts from my answers:
“As such, I’ve taught developers to avoid this and the Hungarian variable naming convention. Instead, we’ve adopted the Mongolian notation system...”
“However, simply using these elements for a structured business model involving UML markup diagrams contained within a FlashScript dynamic framework would not suffice.”
“If I didn’t discover these development flaws, bad data types could have entered the underlying system tables and compromised the server’s SAN (Storage Area Network), which could have invalidated the database server’s Third Normal Form.”
“…implement a Singleton Pattern, which is an object oriented design pattern used to ensure several million instances of a single class can be created”
“…I taught them that if the query string had a proper name and indicated that it was a safe string, that you could reduce the computing needed to sanitize the string and accept it directly.”
“…I’ve taught how developers should always code to an implementation (instead of to an interface), prefer inheritance over composition, how to tightly couple objects in your application so that they do not become too separated…”
“…bad habit of mixing access modifiers within his classes. This resulted in classes that had public, private, as well as protected modifiers. Under my guidance, he successfully created classes with only private fields and methods. “
There's a lot more, but you get the idea. Apparently they thought I did a good job, because I got into a hirable position above many, many other people (no, I didn't take the job). Apparently for some government programming jobs it’s not what you write, but how much you write, how well you restate the question, and how well you confuse the people grading the questionnaire.
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This is just brilliant
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"Under my guidance, he successfully created classes with only private fields and methods."
Good one.
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Is that like Write only memory?
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Brianw79 wrote: “As such, I’ve taught developers to avoid this and the Hungarian variable naming convention. Instead, we’ve adopted the Mongolian notation system...”
Only needed this one to deserve a 5.
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That's Awesome
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If they think all that you wrote was full of great ideas, I can understand why you did not want to take the job.
Just because the code works, it doesn't mean that it is good code.
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Maybe they knew you were being sarcastic and assumed you meant the opposite of everything you wrote, which is why they found your answers acceptable.
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I didn't know that they were big fans of sarcasm!
Just because the code works, it doesn't mean that it is good code.
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I like this one!!!
"how to tightly couple objects in your application so that they do not become too separated…”
Em, shouldn't that be the other way around... Duh!
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence."
<< please vote!! >>
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Superb! Either the guys had a sense of humour, or they were hopelessly incompetent. If it was the former, then maybe you missed out on a cool gig; the latter and you had a lucky escape!
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It is government we are talking about.
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Having had many government contract jobs both state and feral i can empathize with you. Its not what you do or how well you do it its how much politics you put into doing it.
Logic Chip
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Logic Chip wrote: contract jobs both state and feral i can empathize with you
Is a Feral job one you wish you hadn't taken?
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together.
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yes, every government job has been feral, those in Canberra especially.
Logic Chip
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Programmer humor. I love it!
My favorite is the singleton with millions of instances.
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Please tell me it was state or local government and not federal...
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Fortunately no, it’s not the federal government. It’s a state government. I’d honestly be too embarrassed to say which one, but let’s just say it wouldn’t be a big surprise.
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Darn. And here I was hoping it was somebody else's government
patbob
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This explains much. I've always suspected that the lunatics are running the asylum. Now I know where NMCI came from.
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I'm no fan of goto at the best of times, but at least this one disappeared quickly:
If Not rsTest.EOF Then
rsTest.MoveLast
If Format(rsTest!OKDATE, "yyyy/mm/dd") > Format(cutOffDate, "yyyy/mm/dd") Then
dataStat = "2"
GoTo UpdAccount
End If
End If
UpdAccount:
I kid you not!
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I'm not quite sure if the GoTo is the horror, or that I just read a block of VB....
Dirty... I feel dirty...
I wasn't, now I am, then I won't be anymore.
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It's slightly worse than that, this is VBA.
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My thoughts exactly
return 5;
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Well, the GoTo is important here, otherwise the computer may not know what to do: Sit down and have a coffee, travel to Egypt and visit the pyramides or maybe format the harddisks..
I always suggested to put a GoToNextStatement after each statement. But these dumb guys from microsoft didn't want to listen to me..
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