Interview Question: Reverse words in a sentence

Have you ever been asked this question in a technical interview for a software related position: "Using the language of your choice, reverse the words in a sentence."? If so, have you ever wondered how many solutions in different languages exist? Scripting, object-oriented, functional programming, commands, and the list could go on...

Thanks to Andrew for providing such a short and cool solution that might show why Linux users just love Linux and its tools! You can try this on a Linux terminal: echo "this is the sentence to reverse" | tr ' ' '\n' | tac | tr '\n' ' '; echo

Fyi, tr stands for translate character, which means that it will search for all the ' ' (spaces) and replace them with '\n' (new line); tac prints a file/string in reverse, like the opposite of cat.

Let me know what you think and feel free to share your solutions! 

"Interviewing & Dating for the Techie : Playing the game" by Jeremy Hutchings

I would like to thank Jeremy Hutchings for writing this nice post: Interviewing & Dating for the Techie : Playing the game! At this moment, I am currently going through interviews, from the interviewee's side. I normally evaluate the outcome of my interviews and I sometimes really think that employers don't consider the points Jeremy has written at all anymore! As I wish what he is saying would be the way to go, I am so pleased to know that these concepts still exist and are believed in by someone other than myself and the other interviewees! So again, thank you Jeremy! 

Here are some extracts from his post that are really highlighting the points I am talking about:


> "So what if they don't have the specific skills now, if they are the right people they will learn them." 


> "There is a balance between skills in the work place, and more importantly in teams. Personally I rate the ability to communicate (ideas, questions, learning, etc) and the desire to learn very highly."


> "Interview for future potential, not just current limits. If you don’t, you are limiting both of you from the outset. You will loose the good people, as they will get frustrated. So think about their future as well as the organisations when talking."


> "If a person can’t get excited about a topic that is core and relevant to the company then it’s a warning flag. Even if they can’t explain the exact details there and then, given passion they’ll put in the hours to learn. It’s the mindset it’s the passion, if they don’t have it move on."


> "I look for the understanding of logic itself, and how it is applied and used in real world contexts. A programming language (mostly) is just a tool, solving the riddle is the prize."


> "I do it in PHP, you do it in ASP; meh, we both go to the bar !"


> "I appreciate the power that comes from understanding how everything works down to the CPU and assembler level, as I studied it throughout my life since I was 9, and at university for years. Though I don’t expect every developer to know all of it, all of the time."


> "We (developers) tend to get rather good at what we do in the moment, I might not know Erlang now, though give me a challenge and some time.  It’s the ability to learn and adapt to get a problem solved, that I look for."


Quoted text written by:  Jeremy Hutchings

It would be nice to know your opinion about those points!

"Finding Great Developers" by Joel Spolsky on Joel on Software

Really an amazing article!

I was reading it basically to know where good employers search for great developers/employees, but it is written the other way around: it is written for employers to find great developers.

It is well written, gives nice insights, simply great!

So if you have a company or someday decide to do a startup and want to be successful by employing great employees, I would definitely recommend you to take a look at that article. As it was written in 2006, in my opinion its beginning might not be totally true with today's market circumstances after the crisis, but the 3 methods (Go to the mountain, Internships and Build your own community) that he explains later on about how to find and employ great developers are simply amazingly written.

Joel Spolsky is the co-founder of "Fog Creek Software" in New York and this post is from his "Joel on Software" blog. 

Let me know your opinion about his methods!

Finding Great Developers by Joel Spolsky on Joel on Software

"Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice" by Patrick McKenzie

What do you think of this blog post?

Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice by Patrick McKenzie

A small snippet: "If there was one course I could add to every engineering education, it wouldn’t involve compilers or gates or time complexity.  It would be Realities Of Your Industry 101, because we don’t teach them and this results in lots of unnecessary pain and suffering."

Do you agree with Patrick's opinion?