Let's try to flip the perspectives. Let's say you created a game. Let's pretend you want to make money off of it, because you put quite some time into it. Time you could have used to make money by other means.
I know why people pirate, having pirated a lot of software and games in my time, so I won't really feel bad about it. Most people will buy the game if they can, but the world economics are such that for 90% of your potential user base, 60$ represent an insurmountable financial investment. Which is partly why Steam with its frequent discounts and region-specific pricing is so effective at combating piracy.
So yeah, if I wanted to make money with games, I wouldn't. But if I really really wanted to, I would try to get popular, then start a kickstarter and open a patreon. Make sure people can support my art with as little as they can.
As just one example - consider game rentals. Consoles have incredibly low piracy rates, but a healthy (or at least used to be) game rental scene. If someone can only give me 5$ for my game, why should I snub that money? There's probably a million such people across South America alone. I don't see why I would spend time and energy trying to get money out of people who don't value my product instead of finding ways to let everyone who likes my product to support me.
> Most people will buy the game if they can, but the world economics are such that for 90% of your potential user base, 60$ represent an insurmountable financial investment.
Bulllllllshiiiiiiiiit.
> As just one example - consider game rentals. Consoles have incredibly low piracy rates, but a healthy (or at least used to be) game rental scene. If someone can only give me 5$ for my game, why should I snub that money?
There's no game rental scene. Like zero. And consoles have incredibly low piracy rates because they have very effective DRM and closed platforms, which a certain contingent of Hacker News likes to pretend is the cause of piracy.
>Most people will buy the game if they can, but the world economics are such that for 90% of your potential user base, 60$ represent an insurmountable financial investment.
>Bulllllllshiiiiiiiiit.
The third world is numerically bigger than the first world.
60$ is a lot for places without a strong currency.
Have you ever lived in a third world country with a wage that wasn't above the richest 5%?
Yeah, I'm a long time lurker and created an account just for that.
> Let's try to flip the perspectives. Let's say you created a game. Let's pretend you want to make money off of it
I wouldn't have gone that far because I'm smart enough to tell that making money with a game is pretty damn hard (and it has nothing to do with piracy).
But if I had done stupid anyway, I would blame myself.
I could "want to make money" off of my turd too, and put hard effort into it, that doesn't mean I'm entitled to success.
"These numbers do not clarify which percentage of the population owns those guns." from the very same source. You cannot reliably draw conclusions about the likelihood of encountering an armed citizen.
I can understand it might be a red flag for you. It's a clumsy choice of words. I do believe it's meant to say "and you are an asset to the company, in no risk of getting fired".
Though if you could tickle my fancy and go back and read it again, the context is "doing as much work as others" (lifting 100 crates). Which is a positive thing. So you "deserve" to keep your job.
I wonder what is it you'd do if they told you in person, that you can't do online?
I'd say homeworks are good. In a mix. In fact the process should be a mix. It's hard to get it right.
You can find out if they copied the homework. There should always be a follow up talk about it. They should be able to explain the details.
Ask them to add some functionality on spot. They have working code they should be familiar with and you can work with that. You want to test their approach more than anything.
Bug fixing is hard to prepare right. If you have a clear cut position, that would eliminate part of bullet one.
I'd argue that they should not be asked to find the bug. Only to fix it.
It does not have to be the same bug. I'd argue for a pool they can pick from.
You should be testing how they approach the problem and how they go about solving it. Heck you can debug and outline a fix for something you can't really code yourself, I know I did.
Pairing with someone from the team they'd work in could also provide some insight into the dynamic.
I agree there is no cookie cutter way for homework and bugs. That's why they need to be in a mix, well prepared and supervised.
> You can find out if they copied the homework. There should always be a follow up talk about it. They should be able to explain the details.
That doesn't prove anything. They could've hired a senior developer to help them and explain the concepts in detail.
> Ask them to add some functionality on spot. They have working code they should be familiar with and you can work with that. You want to test their approach more than anything.
The more 'real-world' this is, the more it's going to be biased towards those that have experience in a particular stack or with a particular type of development. Which isn't necessarily bad (it could even be good!), but it may be if you want a more agnostic interviewing process.
- The more 'real-world' this is, the more it's going to be biased towards those that have experience in a particular stack or with a particular type of development. Which isn't necessarily bad (it could even be good!), but it may be if you want a more agnostic interviewing process.
I fail to see how that particular point can ever be a negative for the hiring company. If you need specific skills, you dictate the environment. If you want the candidate to bring his own skills, just tell him to pick his favourite tools.
What I always prefer is a take-home programming assignment, and then present the results to a group of developers. You need to be able to explain what you did and answer questions about it.
Was it the same case where an Oracle lawyer disclosed, supposedly on accident, the figures Google earned? Or the other way around. Sorry, my memory is hazy. But I remember the judge being pretty harsh and snarky towards the lawyer.
FWIW, amid the talk about Raspberry Pis, the (fully open) BeagleBone Black/Green has a default experience for casual-tinker-friendly programming where it spins up an on-board Cloud9 instance for the user to poke around.
It's slightly more expensive than its Pi contemporary, but that's expected when everyone keeps flocking to the Pi and the alternative can't make use of the same volume discounts and self-fund engineering to put new board revisions out every year. And even for all that, it's a popular alternative—you're not left hanging out in no-man's land with some exotic hardware. Check the hackerboards.com surveys from over the years that show it trailing the Pi(s).
If I were teaching, I would definitely look at something like Cloud9. I'm in the process of going through Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails tutorial based on Cloud9 and I'm blown away by how good it is.
