I'm not sure if I'm the person you're thinking of. I have a bunch of Oracle experience but nothing in the last 4 years. Some Postgres but nothing particularly complicated and again pretty long ago.

lighttable just came out with a new version, i'm thinking of giving it another try. i love it in theory but my previous attempts didn't stick -- i'd always run into some issue or another that i couldn't figure out and there weren't great docs/tutorials. i think that may have changed tho.... the demos look pretty great.

Resharper improves Javascript for Visual Studio quite a bit, but yeah it's still not great.

Documentation was never a strong point of the Clojure community. Even when the docs look incredible, there is always something missing, wrong, or an ugly surprise lurking in the shadows. Poor documentation is a long-standing complaint about the language. There has been a lot of improvement, but there is still a laissez-faire attitude toward docs and programmers in general.

The d3js demo looks pretty neat.

angular backlash trending on HN today. not trying to reopen any debates here, but thought some of you might be interested (if only to staunchly disagree ):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8651641

Does anyone have any experience with Teiid (http://teiid.jboss.org/about/) or anything similar? We already have a thin data virtualization layer, but were wondering if we're missing out on a pre-existing solution or these things are just not worth the investment.

This was a pretty good distillation of the attitude I find annoying:

Also, several of the complaints were like "we built a 1000-row static table using Angular two-way binding and now it's slow". Like wtf? Why did you do that?

Ended up doing the whole thing and sent them in. Less than 20 minutes later, there's a message from him saying he was pleased I went the extra mile. I didn't think of it that way: I just liked to do it.

Lots of steps to this application process. It feels like I'm trying to get a real job or something.

Nice work.

I don't really like putting people in a situation like that - but yeah, I think you had to do and send in the mid section.

I was confused because I couldn't figure out why he would send the whole test to me if I was only to do part of it.

The test was actually in 3 parts. The Jr part was required and the the 3rd part was "optional." So, I had 3 ways to do it: Jr only; Jr + 3rd section; All of it.

I agree that I don't want to put him in a position, so I pondered it quite a bit. I was able to do all of it fairly easily and really couldn't convince myself that sending it all could hurt once I ignored my paranoia. I suppose the argument can go either way though.

I love programming, however I think my lack of depth in math is leaving me frustrated at times. Will I ever get better at solving these kind of problems? Or there books that I could get to improve? For example below, we had this for our practice programming exam which I could not get.

One of the functions we had to write was to checks if two Rectangle objects intersect each other. Rectangle objects contains two Point structs with the each point on the opposing side diagonally.

If they do intersect, you have to create a new Rectangle with the new Points, otherwise return rectangle the first rectangle.

Rectangle intersection(const r& a, const r& b)
{
}

Are these the type of problems that you are either good at it or not?

The math isn't hard so you can learn that. The time constraint you have in solving this with software would be good to know. Having to come up a solution "instantly" would require a higher aptitude in my view.

If the problem definition is vague, then assumptions will probably have to be made and I'm pretty sure this one is vague. For instance in 2D space you can certainly construct intersecting rectangles whose sides are not paralell to the axes where the intersection does not yield a rectangle. In this one you have to assume the sides are parallel to the axes. The more general the problem definition is the more complicated the programming solution becomes. So yeah I think this kind of a crappy problem. I think the main idea is to see if the student understands C++ class definitions, C++ function signatures, and some basic C++ statements and constructs. The math is not intended to be the challenging part.

Always do the optional part. It's probably part of their screen to see if you go above and beyond.

the ability to solve, say, the tougher project euler problems is helpful in programming for sure. that said, there are many, many successful programmers without that kind of ability, because modern programming requires many other skillsets besides raw cleverness, among them familiarity and experience with a wide set of tools and technologies. (eg, mediocre raw problem solving ability + 5 years android experience probably makes you a more valuable android dev than a brilliant problem solver who's just completed Android Dev in 24 Hours).

that said, the problem above is truly basic and i'd expect anyone i hired to be able to solve it quickly. i'm not saying that to discourage you, but just to answer your question honestly. if you truly love programming, of course you can learn to get better at these types of things. time and desire can get you really far with most things, including programming.

there's also lots of books on improving these skills. this classic comes to mind:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Solve-It-M.../dp/069111966X

EDIT: I should add the problem as stated assumes both rectangles are parallel to the xaxis, which makes the problem easier than the general version of two arbitrarily rotated rects

The problem as defined is ill-specified because two points do not uniquely define a rectangle. Maybe they are assuming a particular orientation.

they are assuming parallel to x-axis

Thanks the book suggestion. I think I was able to solve it but only after looking up and thinking it in my head multiple times. It was a "oh duh moment". Guess I have some work to brush up on...

I'm sure this is the case but mathematically this cannot be inferred. Any fixed orientation works as far as the problem is defined.

Edit: btw, sorry about the digression, hadn't read the other responses and didn't realize this had been all pointed out before.

clearly. I was meta-reasoning into the only assumption that allows the problem to make sense as written

Any other fixed orientation allows the problem to make sense from a mathematical standpoint. What makes you right is that given the context - this isn't a math class - there's no real reason for the instructor to assume any other fixed orientation.

the problem, as it was given to me, gives 2 points of the opposite sides of a rectangle. yes you should assume they are parallel to the x and y axis unless it otherwise specifies.

i just checked if any of the 2nd rectangle's corners end up inside the area bounded by the first rectangle's corners.

the math's not super hard if you draw it out. "when in doubt, draw it out" helps me a lot.

btw on the test, that problem was a 3 dimensional point, and he told you step by step how to write out the math. I did no calculating at all.

the command line/binary stream problem was a ****ing bitch, though. I was first to finish but I had a weird ass bug because I was forgetting to close my fstreams at the end of the main function, which gave me different results each time i ran the program.

so I doubt any of you have ever heard of this, but back in 03 a MMO came out that was pretty groundbreaking for it's time, called Star Wars Galaxies. It got ruined by SOE's incompetence back in like 05 and is now defunct, SOE claims they deleted the source code and the website is gone, etc.

Well, over the last 8 years a small dedicated team of devs have rebuilt like 85% of the game from the ground up and made an emulator. the project is called swgemu, which is the largest one, but there are others out there I believe. it's pretty impressive to me given the complexity of the game and its size.

I wanna get involved somehow, but the dev team is pretty assholish and I'm afraid to jump in and try to install the IDE and submit some patches. I know a lot of stuff will be over my head, but I feel I could sink my teeth into some minor things. is 2 years general programming experience and a year in C++ enough to dive into something like this without making a total fool of myself?

The difference between Java and JavaScript: http://leftoversalad.tumblr.com/post/103503118002

http://blog.smartbear.com/programmin...r-a-rock-star/

Absolutely. There's always a ton of small stuff that needs to get done that nobody wants to do or that isn't super important. Start from there.