Older blog entries for rufius (starting at number 30)

first patch

So after many failed attempts I finally got a pair of patches committed to wine. You can see them here and here. I’m finding that the more and more I learn about wine, the more and more I get addicted to working on it.

The code, compared to many projects written in C that I’ve seen is very clean.  The community is helpful and there’s always something to do since I’m pretty sure there’s a sizable 40-50% of the api thats not completely implemented yet.

Hears to exams and coding.

Syndicated 2007-12-05 01:51:27 from blog.zacbrown.org - just run away, now.

exams

Exams are coming up, this probably won’t be fun.

Syndicated 2007-11-28 20:56:11 from blog.zacbrown.org - just run away, now.

Thoughts on “Crappy Coder Signs”

I was browsing my feeds in Google reader and came across this blog entitled “Signs You’re a Crappy Programmer (and don’t know it)”. For the most part I thought it was fairly accurate with the exception of not following the rule of trying to make your functions less than 20 (30/40/10/whatever) lines of code.

Now I’m not hardline on it, I think one should try to make all functions as short as they possibly can, but I do understand that some functions just can’t be made that way. I think preaching hard line either way is a bad plan but one as a general rule should try to keep functions short and sweet. Writing big long functions makes it hard for people besides yourself to follow the code quickly. I’ve dealt with my share of crappy functions that were a hundred lines long and totally unclear. Thats what you get when you work with people that aren’t programmers first though.

Syndicated 2007-11-24 02:40:34 from blog.zacbrown.org - just run away, now.

Beaujolais Nouveau - Recipe for Connections

Last night I went to my boss’s party titled “Beaujolais Nouveau.” Apparently this is in reference to some French wine, but I’m not a wine drinker and thus I had none and was not interested in it. Overall an interesting night, lots of professors, business people and tech enthusiasts. My boss’s wife is “big on the tech scene” or at least was before taking her current job.

The main highlight of the night was actually meeting Alex de Carvahlo, organizer of BarCamp Miami and RefreshMiami. I’ve been hunting for some tech groups to get involved in in South Florida but it seems its only a budding area. Despite that I’ve now got something else to get involved in outside of IEEE and ACM. I also met a guy by the name of Nathaniel, though his last name escapes me. Nathaniel organizes NextMiami which is another tech enthusiast & venture capital group. These should both be good contacts for the future.

Any one that even gives this blog a passing glance a developer in South Florida that knows of other interest groups?

Syndicated 2007-11-19 06:28:56 from blog.zacbrown.org - just run away, now.

7 Nov 2007 (updated 28 Nov 2007 at 21:22 UTC) »
7 Nov 2007 (updated 28 Nov 2007 at 21:22 UTC) »

Google interview, Microsoft survey, enterprise java, and more...

Well today is the big day. At 16:00 EST I'll have my first of two phone interviews with Google for a software engineer intern position at Google SMo (Santa Monica for those that don't speak Googlese). A friend of mine that works at Google SMo was the one that helped me get an interview, and it will be his boss that I interview with for my position. Immediately following the first interview, I'll have a 15 minute break for a second Google employee calls me to interview me.

I spent some time reviewing some basic algorithms stuff (ie: different sorts, dynamic programming, greedy solutions) but I figure at this point that I'll just play it safe and be myself. If they aren't able to accept that not everyone has all the answers then its probably not a good fit for me. Most everyone I've talked to that's either worked for Google or has experience in the field seem to unanimously agree that there's no use freaking out, just solve the problems :).

On a different note, I received a survey from Microsoft that they send to all potential employees regarding "race and gender equality efforts." It was basically a 3x5 index card that asked for my gender (or "prefer not to share") and my race with a "check all that apply" instruction. I filled it out for kicks and we'll see whether they're interested enough to fly me to Redmond. I would like to get involved there just because F# is coming out and I specifically asked to work on the F# team. Anyway, here's to internships *raises beer*.

My new fun adventure is figuring the ever complex and baffling practice that is Java enterprise development. I have pretty much no knowledge of the process of developing a web app in java, other than a faint idea that I need something like Tomcat or Jetty or JBoss or one of the other million frameworks. We're working with a GWT frontend and its my job to develop a java back end of sorts or some other suitable backend that will talk dirty (or nicely if you like) to the GWT frontend to provide some data.

Anyone got any hints on how to do all that? Just a basic guide is needed, I just need something to jump start me.

Stay tuned, later this evening or early tomorrow I will post two blog entries (one for each interview) about my experiences and the questions I was asked in my Google interview. Thats all folks :)

Syndicated 2007-11-06 16:25:00 (Updated 2007-11-06 17:46:49) from zbrown

response to ncm

ncm: Well the main problem with me interning with Aspera is I'm not a third year student, I'm in my second year, granted I'm taking classes that a third year student would be taking. I'm also not comfortable with my skills in TCP/IP protocols yet, network programming is a weak area for me that I'm working on currently. If you see a way around this and know of an in on getting an internship with Aspera, you have my full & undivided attention.

On a side note, the feedback I've heard from friends here that have done internships with Microsoft have enjoyed it quite a bit. I've heard goods and bads all around really. People already in the industry have given negative feedback for the most part about MS, while people younger in the field have given fairly positive responses. Apparently they treat them pretty well.

One of my good friends on the other works at Google and pulled a couple strings to get me an interview with them though that one makes me more anxious for obvious reasons. We'll see how that goes.

Syndicated 2007-10-20 01:40:00 (Updated 2007-10-20 01:48:39) from zbrown

Internships and more...

So I've been hard at work getting myself an internship with a company, preferrably Microsoft or Google. I'm somewhat anxious about the technical interviews that I've heard others speak of. I feel confident in my skills and knowledge as a programmer, I just get a little anxious over these things.

For Google I don't quite know yet what I'd be doing but I suspect if I'm asked I would say ask for something in the data-mining or search optimization areas. I've always been interested in such problems and this would be a good opportunity to learn more about this.

In the case of Microsoft, I've asked to be put to work in the Compilers & Language Design department. I'm very interested in F#, their OCaml + C# + Haskell hash up that should be interesting. I've been picking up OCaml on the side now for a little bit and this would be another interesting opportunity.

Anyone have any suggestions or tips on getting through the technical interviews?

Syndicated 2007-10-17 22:26:00 (Updated 2007-10-17 22:31:40) from zbrown

Everyone is out to get me....

It would seem this week that everyone is out to get me... Guess thats life. Who wants to take my marine science exam? Any takers? Shouldn't be hard... guess thats a good reason for me to take it.

===============

On a different note, Algorithms & Data Structs was interesting, lots of probabilities. Hurrah!

Syndicated 2007-09-21 16:00:00 (Updated 2007-09-21 16:02:58) from zbrown

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