• (cs)
    Apparently, my inability to influence past decisions limited my employment opportunities at this new company.

    Otherwise he could have prevented his interviewer from being hired afterwards.

    Addendum (2010-06-10 10:13): D'oh! I'm no longer able to change this comment to "frist".

  • (cs)

    Haven't I read these here before?

  • (cs) in reply to DOA
    DOA:
    Haven't I read these here before?
    Yes, at least in the forums: http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/14007/208120.aspx
  • muhaha the mad scientist (unregistered)

    they seriously use Ook! ? Oh my god, at least use brainfuck!

  • (cs) in reply to DOA
    DOA:
    Haven't I read these here before?

    It's from the sidebar: http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/14007/208179.aspx

    Addendum (2010-06-10 09:25): On a sidenote, Akismet blocked this post as spam until I appended meaningless repetitive text. Remember, Ralphie, if your nose starts bleeding it means you're picking it too much... or not enough.

  • Bryan The K (unregistered)

    The real WTF is he's a Patriots fan, right?

    CAPTCHA: jumentum. Never JUMp to momENTUM

  • ray10k (unregistered) in reply to muhaha the mad scientist
    muhaha the mad scientist:
    they seriously use Ook! ? Oh my god, at least use brainfuck!

    there was more than one GOOD reason to run. They also mentioned MUMPS and C-pound. neither are a good sign.

  • (cs)

    I've run into hostile interviewers (like the first one) a few times over the years. For me, it's a major red flag and pretty much kills it right there. At that point, since my time has already been wasted, and there's no way I'd ever want to work with/near/around/in-the-same-building-with a jerk like that, I usually stop them dead in their tracks with something like:

    "It was another company with different managers who thought that their way was the only correct way. Since I'm flexible, I went along with management-mandated foolish decisions and watched them pay for their arrogance.

    You appear to be equally adamant that your way is the only correct way.

    Good luck with that."

    and then I simply leave without another word.

  • Some Wonk (unregistered)
    "We have a lot of great stuff down the pipes."
    Clearly, the manager is alluding to their upcoming online urine test. After all, the internet is nothing but a series of tubes.
  • HopelessIntern (unregistered) in reply to Some Wonk
    Some Wonk:
    "We have a lot of great stuff down the pipes."
    Clearly, the manager is alluding to their upcoming online urine test. After all, the internet is nothing but a series of tubes.

    Or the manager wants to piss all over the internet. Little does he know, everyone already does that.

  • PITA (unregistered)

    Post a comment. If you don't, then you can fuck off.

  • Anon (unregistered)

    To give the first interviewer the benefit of the doubt, I think he might have been challenging the interviewee to compare and contrast the various technologies that could have been used. It seem a relevant question to me and the "that happened before my time" answer is a missed opportunity by the interviewee.

    "JBoss?!" the interviewer jumped in, "why didn't they use Tomcat, if they were going to use Java?"

    "I'm not sure,"

    Buzzz, wrong answer. Sure it was a decision made some time ago and of course you can't retroactively change those decisions, but the right answer was to say something along the lines of "well with JBoss you can do x which you can't do in Tomcat...." (or vice versa). You don't have to agree that one is better than the other, but you should understand what the relative strengths and weaknesses are.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to joeyadams
    joeyadams:
    DOA:
    Haven't I read these here before?
    It's from the sidebar: http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/14007/208179.aspx

    Addendum (2010-06-10 09:25): On a sidenote, Akismet blocked this post as spam until I appended meaningless repetitive text. Remember, Ralphie, if your nose starts bleeding it means you're picking it too much... or not enough.

    This is typical of Akismet, the damn thing is so twitchy that it's flagged a link to the same domain as the originating page. Shows you just how poor Akismet really is; I've had false positives in the past in which there were no links at all! I guess it's better than the spam but I'm sure there are far better solutions out there than Akismet. I've also heard that the developers can be vindictive dicks if you piss them off.

  • mrs_helm (unregistered)

    "Apparently, my inability to influence past decisions limited my employment opportunities at this new company." Actually, it would appear to have been an asset at this new company. You should have exercised it during the interview.

  • Pete (unregistered)

    Good old C-Pound my favourite language.

    I don't even know where that comes from I could understand C-Hash or C-Number. Is it called that in America? I'm from the UK so pound is £.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to HopelessIntern
    HopelessIntern:
    Some Wonk:
    "We have a lot of great stuff down the pipes."
    Clearly, the manager is alluding to their upcoming online urine test. After all, the internet is nothing but a series of tubes.

    Or the manager wants to piss all over the internet. Little does he know, everyone already does that.

    You can piss on the internet as long you don't take a dump on it. The internet is not a dump truck.

  • HopelessIntern (unregistered) in reply to Pete
    Pete:
    Good old C-Pound my favourite language.

    I don't even know where that comes from I could understand C-Hash or C-Number. Is it called that in America? I'm from the UK so pound is £.

    Yeah in the states, the # symbol is called a pound. Still, it is no excuse. C-pound is just as wrong as C-hash or C-number, any competent IT-related professional should know it is C-sharp (it makes sense too, its musical notation).

  • Mister Zimbu (unregistered) in reply to Pete
    Pete:
    Good old C-Pound my favourite language.

    I don't even know where that comes from I could understand C-Hash or C-Number. Is it called that in America? I'm from the UK so pound is £.

    Yes, it's called the pound symbol in America.

    Honestly, I haven't the slightest clue as to why- we don't even use it to abbreviate the word "pound" in any context that I'm aware of. Unfortunately, it was named before my time.

  • Mike D. (unregistered) in reply to Pete
    Pete:
    Good old C-Pound my favourite language.

    I don't even know where that comes from I could understand C-Hash or C-Number. Is it called that in America? I'm from the UK so pound is £.

    Way back, in the mists of time, the "#" symbol was used as a suffix to represent pounds-mass (lb, as opposed to pounds-force, lbf, or pounds-currency, £). So "50#" would mean 50 pounds.

    Thing is, I think I've seen it used like that three times since I learned it around 1980. You're not missing anything.

  • (cs) in reply to Mike D.
    Mike D.:
    Pete:
    Good old C-Pound my favourite language.

    I don't even know where that comes from I could understand C-Hash or C-Number. Is it called that in America? I'm from the UK so pound is £.

    Way back, in the mists of time, the "#" symbol was used as a suffix to represent pounds-mass (lb, as opposed to pounds-force, lbf, or pounds-currency, £). So "50#" would mean 50 pounds.

    Thing is, I think I've seen it used like that three times since I learned it around 1980. You're not missing anything.

    It's still used frequently in grocery stores in my area (Los Angeles). You'll see a sign under the potatoes reading something like "Potatoes 5# bag $x.xx".

  • Ken (unregistered) in reply to Anon

    This sounds like an interview for a frontend dev. They highly skilled in their area of expertise but I don't expect them to know every nuance of how a tomcat server works vs a Jboss server. I'd expect them to know what those are and that they aren't the same thing. The questions were outside of their field of expertise and they shouldn't be expected to have control or even knowledge of decisions that shouldn't affect their work.

    It sounds like you want backend devs who know a bit of front end development instead of having frontend devs that know a little backend. I wonder how crappy and wtf laden your frontend is.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Mike D.
    Mike D.:
    Pete:
    Good old C-Pound my favourite language.

    I don't even know where that comes from I could understand C-Hash or C-Number. Is it called that in America? I'm from the UK so pound is £.

    Way back, in the mists of time, the "#" symbol was used as a suffix to represent pounds-mass (lb, as opposed to pounds-force, lbf, or pounds-currency, £). So "50#" would mean 50 pounds.

    Thing is, I think I've seen it used like that three times since I learned it around 1980. You're not missing anything.

    What annoys me most about this confusion is that the hash symbol (or "pound", if you will) is actually different to the sharp symbol anyway. Hash = #, sharp = ♯.

  • Septic Tank (unregistered) in reply to Pete
    Pete:
    Good old C-Pound my favourite language.

    I don't even know where that comes from I could understand C-Hash or C-Number. Is it called that in America? I'm from the UK so pound is £.

    Yeah, it's a septic thing. (Septic Tank)

    I work for a septic company and they say press 1 then pound while I'm on teleconference with them. They mean hash.

    I say tom-art-o you say tom-ate-o.

  • highphilosopher (unregistered) in reply to Pete
    Pete:
    Good old C-Pound my favourite language.

    I don't even know where that comes from I could understand C-Hash or C-Number. Is it called that in America? I'm from the UK so pound is £.

    Yeah, that's our American leaking through so...

    C-Pound == C# C-Hash == I can see the baggie of weed sticking out of your pocket C-Number == Can I call you later follow up question. C-Sharp == Programming Language, or musical Note. I think it should be noted that in music, a sharp note is a half step above the natural tone. I think this is the reason Microsoft chose this name was to infer that they were a half step above the competition. What actually happened is that when tuning an instrument, if you stretch a string for instance too tight, it produces a sound that's sharp or slightly out of tune. I think this metaphor better describes the Sharp family of Microsoft programming languages.

  • Steve (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    What annoys me most about this confusion is that the hash symbol (or "pound", if you will) is actually different to the sharp symbol anyway. Hash = #, sharp = ♯.
    If you silly yanks need a mnemonic, just remember that "hash = horizontal, sharp = sloped". The lines on the hash symbol must be perfectly horizontal, whereas the lines on the sharp symbol must be sloped. That's not so hard, is it?
  • mace (unregistered)

    Exactly why does a drug testing company need over a dozen different programming languages? That doesn't sound like using "the right tool to solve the right problem".

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    What annoys me most about this confusion is that the hash symbol (or "pound", if you will) is actually different to the sharp symbol anyway. Hash = #, sharp = ♯.
    Blame Microsoft for naming a language using a non-ASCII character that isn't on most keyboards, but that looks very similar to an ASCII one that is. Anyone who didn't expect confusion from that just wasn't thinking.
  • iToad (unregistered) in reply to Pete
    Pete:
    Good old C-Pound my favourite language.

    I don't even know where that comes from I could understand C-Hash or C-Number. Is it called that in America? I'm from the UK so pound is £.

    Is this the same language as C£ ?

  • Incourced (unregistered)

    The Interupting Rebutter may have been carrying out a very low level bit of industrial espionage.

    CV comes in from a competitor or other interesting company. Invite them in, then ask them loads of business and not programming type questions.

  • name (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Mike D.:
    Pete:
    Good old C-Pound my favourite language.

    I don't even know where that comes from I could understand C-Hash or C-Number. Is it called that in America? I'm from the UK so pound is £.

    Way back, in the mists of time, the "#" symbol was used as a suffix to represent pounds-mass (lb, as opposed to pounds-force, lbf, or pounds-currency, £). So "50#" would mean 50 pounds.

    Thing is, I think I've seen it used like that three times since I learned it around 1980. You're not missing anything.

    What annoys me most about this confusion is that the hash symbol (or "pound", if you will) is actually different to the sharp symbol anyway. Hash = #, sharp = ♯.

    We type # because it's a lot easier than some alt code or what-have-you trying to get the sharp sign. It does NOT mean you should pronounce it C-pound or C-number, etc., since it is known that it should be C-sharp.

    If you look at icons for the C# language, they use the correctly slanted sharp symbol (try looking in the "About Microsoft Visual Studio" dialog for C# or the icon on the Class item in C# items). QED.

  • will (unregistered) in reply to Mister Zimbu
    Mister Zimbu:
    Pete:
    Good old C-Pound my favourite language.

    I don't even know where that comes from I could understand C-Hash or C-Number. Is it called that in America? I'm from the UK so pound is £.

    Yes, it's called the pound symbol in America.

    Honestly, I haven't the slightest clue as to why- we don't even use it to abbreviate the word "pound" in any context that I'm aware of. Unfortunately, it was named before my time.

    If were a geek you would know the correct name is Octothorpe.

    The name of pound is old tech when it was an international symbol for package weight.

  • (cs)

    Pound is also used in the UK for the weight of goods in places like grocers although kilo is more common these days (although weight in lbs can be displayed for an item, a metric unit must also be displayed due to EU regulations).

    This has come to be somewhat of an archaic use (I'm 30 and was still only used fairly rarely in supermarkets and grocers when I was still at school). The reason for this is likely that until relatively recently it was illegal to displaying weight in anything but metric units, but this was challenged and now non-metric values may be provided as supplementary indicators - though as almost everyone stopped using it in the 1990's (when EU regulations came in to force) only a few die hard imperial fans continue to use it.

    On UK Apple keyboards shift-3 is £, and opt-3 is # (because the are both "pound"). The # symbol is not marked on the keyboard however, so it's really funning watching people writing to write shell scripts for the first time on mac.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Ken
    Ken:
    This sounds like an interview for a frontend dev. They highly skilled in their area of expertise but I don't expect them to know every nuance of how a tomcat server works vs a Jboss server. I'd expect them to know what those are and that they aren't the same thing. The questions were outside of their field of expertise and they shouldn't be expected to have control or even knowledge of decisions that shouldn't affect their work.

    It sounds like you want backend devs who know a bit of front end development instead of having frontend devs that know a little backend. I wonder how crappy and wtf laden your frontend is.

    They don't need to know about the ins and outs of the backend if they are a frontend developer, but I'd expect more than a fucking shrug and "I don't know" when asked a question about it. If they can't demonstrate even the slightest interest in anything outside their own narrow area of expertise then they aren't likely to be very valuable employee. On the bright side, they'll probably be easy to replace.

  • Herby (unregistered) in reply to HopelessIntern
    HopelessIntern:
    Pete:
    Good old C-Pound my favourite language.

    I don't even know where that comes from I could understand C-Hash or C-Number. Is it called that in America? I'm from the UK so pound is £.

    Yeah in the states, the # symbol is called a pound. Still, it is no excuse. C-pound is just as wrong as C-hash or C-number, any competent IT-related professional should know it is C-sharp (it makes sense too, its musical notation).
    Back when I was doing telephone work, there was great confusion on what to call the '#' character. One in our staff said "you know like the tic-tac-toe game". Of course the dumb droid on the other end of the phone then knew what we were talking about. As for languages, Microsoft should have chosen the equivalent: 'D-flat' as a language. Would have made more sense!

  • Doodle (unregistered)

    I'd settle for C++++.

  • (cs)
    Huckster:
    A few days later I was, in fact, offered a job--to which I replied "Fuck off!"
  • gho5t (unregistered) in reply to Anon

    He was a front-end developer...

  • (cs) in reply to Herby
    Herby:
    As for languages, Microsoft should have chosen the equivalent: 'D-flat' as a language. Would have made more sense!

    Then you'd have to deal with people who had ten years of experience in "dee bee".

  • Skilldrick (unregistered) in reply to muhaha the mad scientist

    Exactly! I'm at least 10 times more productive in brainfuck than Ook!

  • Slicerwizard (unregistered) in reply to Mister Zimbu
    Mister Zimbu:
    Yes, it's called the pound symbol in America.

    Honestly, I haven't the slightest clue as to why- we don't even use it to abbreviate the word "pound" in any context that I'm aware of. Unfortunately, it was named before my time.

    Your inability to influence past decisions is lame in the extreme. You can fuck off.

  • r2k (unregistered) in reply to Doodle

    C+=2 is one fewer character and equivalent!

  • (cs) in reply to Bellinghman
    Bellinghman:
    Anonymous:
    What annoys me most about this confusion is that the hash symbol (or "pound", if you will) is actually different to the sharp symbol anyway. Hash = #, sharp = ♯.
    Blame Microsoft for naming a language using a non-ASCII character that isn't on most keyboards, but that looks very similar to an ASCII one that is. Anyone who didn't expect confusion from that just wasn't thinking.

    Hey, they also gave us .net. Y'know, just to make search engines cater to them, and understand "dot net" means "Microsoft .net"

  • AnOldRelic (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    What annoys me most about this confusion is that the hash symbol (or "pound", if you will) is actually different to the sharp symbol anyway. Hash = #, sharp = ♯.
    While correct, look at how C# is actually illustrated on the C# icons. They use the ♯ symbol, and as such, it's C-Sharp. It's often represented as a # as one can more easily type it by hitting shift-3 on an American-English QWERTY keyboard, as opposed to doing an alt-numpad code.
  • AnOldRelic (unregistered) in reply to AnOldRelic
    AnOldRelic:
    Anonymous:
    What annoys me most about this confusion is that the hash symbol (or "pound", if you will) is actually different to the sharp symbol anyway. Hash = #, sharp = ♯.
    While correct, look at how C# is actually illustrated on the C# icons. They use the ♯ symbol, and as such, it's C-Sharp. It's often represented as a # as one can more easily type it by hitting shift-3 on an American-English QWERTY keyboard, as opposed to doing an alt-numpad code.

    Augh, I was beaten to the punch.

  • PITA (unregistered) in reply to Pete
    Pete:
    Good old C-Pound my favourite language.

    I don't even know where that comes from I could understand C-Hash or C-Number. Is it called that in America? I'm from the UK so pound is £.

    The '#' closely resembles the symbol used in music notation indicating a sharp note.

    "The sharp sign (♯) is often confused with the number (hash) sign (#). The key difference is that the number sign has compulsory true horizontal strokes while the sharp sign cannot have them. Instead, the sharp sign has two slanted parallel lines which rise from left-to-right. Both signs may have true-vertical lines; however, these are compulsory in the sharp, but optional in the number sign (#) depending on typeface or handwriting style." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_(music)

  • blunder (unregistered)

    I can't believe you're really having the C-Pound conversation.

    http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Classic-WTF-5-years-Cpound-experience.aspx

    It was just an in-joke, as with the MUMPS mention.

    What is it with programmers and parsing things literally?

  • Me (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    "JBoss?!" the interviewer jumped in, "why didn't they use Tomcat, if they were going to use Java?"

    "I'm not sure,"

    Buzzz, wrong answer. Sure it was a decision made some time ago and of course you can't retroactively change those decisions, but the right answer was to say something along the lines of "well with JBoss you can do x which you can't do in Tomcat...." (or vice versa). You don't have to agree that one is better than the other, but you should understand what the relative strengths and weaknesses are.

    The interviewer didn't ask about the relative merits of JBoss and Tomcat -- he asked what were the deciding factors in a decision that the interviewee had no part in. For all he knows, it was because the CEO's brother-in-law told him about JBoss during a holiday dinner.

    Don't be line Mr Anon here. If you want the interviewee to compare X and Y, ask "What are the relative merits of X and Y?" -- don't ask "Why did somebody you may not even know choose X?"

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to blunder
    blunder:
    I can't believe you're really having the C-Pound conversation.

    http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Classic-WTF-5-years-Cpound-experience.aspx

    It was just an in-joke, as with the MUMPS mention.

    What is it with programmers and parsing things literally?

    We know that RHuckster knows the proper name because we've all read his forum posts and he's a smart guy, so it was meant jokingly in his submission. But seriously, people do call it C-Pound. I've heard Americans call it that many times and believe me, they weren't trying to be funny. It is not just and in-joke and it does warrant discussion. If you don't want to get involved then you're better off not posting anything since your comment has added nothing to the discussion.

  • Pounder (unregistered)

    One thing I kind of like about C-pound is that the pound sign could be seen as a pair of plus signs overlaid on top of each other. So it's like C-plus-plus but expresses the same thing with less verbosity. Shame the language is nothing like that.

  • Plz Send Me The Code (unregistered)

    I don't get the 'pipes' faux pas.

Leave a comment on “The Interupting Rebutter, The Final Word, and The Jury Rig”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

Log Out

« Return to Article