[daydr3am3r]

OK, I know this sounds weird but I really need to ask. This is my final college year and like every freshman I want to get a job. I worked during college years but not as a dev(still IT&C job) and I also have some projects as a freelancer. I really like dotNET(especially C#) but the problem is I don't have all those N years of experience. I'm pretty good with C++ and I've worked(and still do) with Java & VB but I had to learn C# myself.
The first major problem I encounter so far is the low popularity of dotNET in my area(Bucharest,Romania).
I wouldn't make such a big fuss out of this but usually if I start talking with colleagues or other people that work as developers, about personal projects and other stuff like this, I'm being told that dotNET sucks and C# it's not a real programming language or that even monkeys could code in C# :| It even happened to me in college, during the class. I was talking about an app that uses graphs to solve transportation problems and in the end, when I mentioned the app was written in VC# the professor was so disappointed and he told me to switch to another PL since dotNET makes thing harder
Another problem is the job interview for dotNET dev. So far I stumbled upon a few weird problems.
For example I was asked to manipulate some strings in C#, nothing complicated. Since I had enough time I solved the problem in 2 ways: by using dotNET specific functions and without them. And here comes the weird part - the guy that checked the result was "disappointed"(that's what he said LOL) that I decided TO ACTUALLY USE SPECIFIC dotNET FUNCTIONS I guess I don't have to say I didn't pass the test :|
Another company, another interview, same story: I was asked to develop an app using Windows Forms BUT WITHOUT ACTUALLY USING THE DESIGNER, because it takes way too long. Obviously, the app was supposed to look good even if I was asked to place and arrange the controls on the form without actually seeing what I am doing. I simply fail to see how arranging the controls by moving them pixel by pixel is faster than drag n drop :|
Is there something I'm missing here???? Is this a normal dotNET job interview???? Is this how you actually write apps in C# using VS??
I don't mind being told I lack of experience since I actually do but being told I lack of experience because I use the VS Drag n Drop designer instead of placing and moving controls pixel by pixel or that I use dotNET functions when I write a C# app seams at least weird. Has someone here experienced something like this or it was simply bad luck?
I know this is weird but I kinda got a little scared

This post has been edited by daydr3am3r: 17 June 2011 - 02:16 PM

[JackOfAllTrades]

Not having been on a .NET interview I can't say, but the second one seems REALLY weird to me. UI dev is done through the designer; to expect otherwise seems ridiculous.

[modi123_1]

Ugh I am so tired of language snobbery. .NET is not junk, C# is not garbage, and I use both daily in a real honest to god business.

Nope never had an issue like your string problem. I am too damn busy to reinvent the wheel.

Regarding the controls - yeah that's odd. Who knows if they are testing your abstract thinking.

Both situations are not how I develop .NET apps and I've been doing it for damn near ten years. Regarding if this is typical interviews - who knows what a typical interview is. Jackass companies asking you specially obtuse questions... "how many ping pong balls would fill this room right now?".

I say bad luck there buddy.

[raziel_]

Quote

when I mentioned the app was written in VC# the professor was so disappointed and he told me to switch to another PL since dotNET makes thing harder

Is your professor on drugs all the time or was he only when he tell you this? I`m sick of fucktards that have no idea what C# is and how makes thing harder. Make them harder because you dont have to do all the shitty annoying things that you will do writing it on C or Assembly maybe. And to think this guy is actually teaching students ... outrages.

Quote

the guy that checked the result was "disappointed"(that's what he said LOL) that I decided TO ACTUALLY USE SPECIFIC dotNET FUNCTIONS

Another drug addicted retard that you dont even have to waste your time even if they ask you to work for them. The point of all the .NET is to shorten the dev. process and increase productivity if your going to manipulate every string cutting it to array of chars just to remove all empty spaces then good luck finishing any real problem. I have to say that the ppl that ask you for interview have no idea of .NET. Are you sure they are not just blond HR girls that read the tasks wrong? Bad luck i guess and i thought my old boss have no idea of programming ....

EDIT: Your professor remind me of one of my teachers(god bless he is not professor and i bet he never will be) in the Uni. Instead of asking me on what a functions or classes in my program do or why i write it that way on my C++ exam he ask me about punctuations. in Class1.Method1 he wanted me to answer him that there is a dot out there not what the class contain or what the method do. I thought i was taking C++ exam not a literature exam on punctuations. Well thats how my exam ended failing me to answering "dot". i got D or C i dont recall right now.

This post has been edited by NoBrain: 17 June 2011 - 05:23 PM

[tlhIn`toq]

Quote

I was asked to develop an app using Windows Forms BUT WITHOUT ACTUALLY USING THE DESIGNER, because it takes way too long. Obviously, the app was supposed to look good even if I was asked to place and arrange the controls on the form without actually seeing what I am doing. I simply fail to see how arranging the controls by moving them pixel by pixel is faster than drag n drop

It was a test. Not an example of how they do things day in and day out. The point was to see if you could do it. They wanted to know if you actually UNDERSTOOD how the forms are built in code - or if you are a college drag-n-drop monkey with no actual comprehension of of the controls are created and how the x,y coordinate system of a form works.

My 6 year old niece can drag a tool from a pallet and drop it on a canvas. Its no different than her Leap Frog drawing program that lets her drag a flower onto the meadow.

They wanted to know if you understood the actual hiarchy of the .Controls of a form. If you could programmatically make a ToolstripContainer and put in the form docked, then add a menustrip to that, then add buttons to the content panel and so on.

Sometimes it really is the faster if you have LOTS of controls that can be created in a loop. And you are guaranteed that everything lines up because you set the x,y numerically instead of "that looks right".

Again, I'm not suggesting this is how they do their real development Monday through Friday. It is a test to thin out the hurd of graduates.

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Is this a normal dotNET job interview????

Maybe it is in your country. We in the States wouldn't really know what is 'normal' there.

It's kinda like what is 'normal' coding in places like India. Sure it is a country with lots of .NET outsourcing for dirt cheap - but you get what you pay for. There is LOTS of documentation out there about how the India programming practices are years behind the developed nations. You may be facing the same problem there. The entrenched senior programmers (and teachers that used to be programmers) only know their 1980's raw C language way of doing things and shit on anything new.

Look at any old-school photographer that swears up and down by film cameras. You will never convince this person that a modern 18 megapixel DSLR is a good camera. In their mind digital will always be crap because it was 10 years ago.

Or an old-school graphic artist that says Photoshop is crap for mouse-monkeys. If you aren't in a dark room burning negatives, airbrushing photos, using an Xacto knife, border tape and Rapidograph pens then you aren't a real graphic artist.

The problem is that in some cases they aren't wrong. Too many people call themselves Photographers only because they have a camera... call themselves a Graphic Artist because than can dink around their pirated copy of Photoshop... or call themselves Software Engineers because they can make a form and drop checkboxes on it.

The tools don't magically transform a person. You have to have skill and knowledge and an ability to *THINK*. If you can't actually *engineer* the software before you start banging on the keyboard then don't call yourself a Software Engineer.

I would assume that was the real goal of the tests you took: To assess your real skill level.

[daydr3am3r]

Thank you all for your answers.
@modi123_1, @JackOfAllTrades, I agree with you here. There are lots of other important things to be done instead of reinventing the wheel.
@tlhIn`toq, you are right here. Having the right tools does not transform you into a pro. I also understand the need to test your possible future employee. What really bothered me was his argument.
Also I asked if this is a normal dotNET job interview simply because I consider testing someones skills for a dev job can't be very different. Testing the way someone thinks is a must. The other aspects of the interview depend on what they aspect you to do and the amount of experience you claim you have.

[tlhIn`toq]

daydr3am3r, on 18 June 2011 - 07:16 AM, said:

@tlhIn`toq, you are right here. Having the right tools does not transform you into a pro. I also understand the need to test your possible future employee. What really bothered me was his argument.

Maybe they wanted to hear your argument. Wanting to see if you even would respond. Would you just go along with whatever you were told like a sheep? Because you are desperate for a job or simply don't know any better? Or would you stand up for yourself and your $50,000 worth of education and your beliefs? The test in his arguments might have been to gauge you as a person and prospective employee. If hired would you just go along with whatever your supervisor told you? Meekly hiding in the woodwork whether you agreed or not? Or would you politely voice your own opinions and make suggestions and comments for possible better and more modern ways that are in keeping with modern computers? They are interviewing college grads, so somewhere they recognize they have a need for new blood and new ways of thinking. If they didn't want someone fresh they would hire someone else with years of experience at doing it just the way they've always done it for the last 10 years. But that wouldn't get them someone with an up-to-date perspective on an up-to-date OS and up-to-date tools. And they know that. They didn't get to where they are in that corporation by being stupid.

I'm assuming you said nothing because you didn't mention actually getting into a discussion/debate with the interviewer, and something that important you would have mentioned. So they got their answer: Even you felt your education wasn't worth defending and you lacked conviction in your chosen coding language and/or confidence in your own skills. Good or bad. Write or wrong. You didn't say or do anything that would distinguish yourself from the other 500 applicants that sat there quietly, answered the same questions, and blended in with the chair they were sitting on, in the hopes of not angering the interviewer. In the process blending in all the applicants until they are all just a monochromatic blur in the interviewers mind.

daydr3am3r, on 18 June 2011 - 07:16 AM, said:

Also I asked if this is a normal dotNET job interview simply because I consider testing someones skills for a dev job can't be very different. Testing the way someone thinks is a must. The other aspects of the interview depend on what they aspect you to do and the amount of experience you claim you have.

I don't *mean* to sound condescending (I just have a natural talent for it, it seems) but you are too young to know what the 'normal' interview for *any* job is. The simply fact is there is NO normal. There is no single school that all Human Resource people from all companies go to, to learn the single normal way to interview. You already know that even in a small tightly managed realm of coding there is no 'normal' way to write a method that will do a task. If you have 10 coders write a method for the same goal you will get 10 different ways. Now apply that to something as abstract as hiring a human with their own motivations and skills, taking into account your own motivations and agendas, with the hopes their personality will blend with the personalities of the other team members.

If you went on 10 interviews for hospital janitor, they would all be different. 10 interviews for convenience store clerk would all be different. The only normal is that there is no normal.