theodp writes “Some people, writes Dave Winer, make the mistake of thinking that if the result of someone’s work is easy to use, the work itself must be easy. Like the boss — or boss’s boss’s boss — who asks for your code so he can show you how to implement the features he wants instead of having to bother to explain things. Give the code to him, advises Winer. If he pulls it off, even poorly, at least you’ll know what he was asking for. And if he fails, well, he might be more patient about explaining what exactly he wants, and perhaps even appreciate how hard your work is. Or — more likely — you may simply never hear from him again. Win-win-win. So, how do you handle an anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better boss?”

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theodp writes “Your brain teaser prowess may win you a job at Google, but the folks at 37signals don’t hire programmers based on puzzles, API quizzes, math riddles, or other parlor tricks. ‘The only reliable gauge I’ve found for future programmer success,’ explains 37signals’ David Heinemeier Hansson, ‘is looking at real code they’ve written, talking through bigger picture issues, and, if all that is swell, trying them out for size.’”
Those of you who have hired employees: have you seen correlation between interview puzzle success and job competency? How should an interviewee best handle these questions?

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rhartness writes "I am a long time Software Engineer, however, almost all of my work has been developing server-side, intranet applications or applications for the Windows desktop environment. With that said, I have recently come up with an idea for a new website which would require extremely high levels of security (i.e. I need to be sure that my servers are as 100% rock-solid, unhackable as possible.) I am an experienced developer, and I have a general understanding of web security; however, I am clueless of what is requires to create a web server that is as secure as, say, a banking account management system. Can the Slashdot community recommend good websites, books, or any other resources that thoroughly discuss the topic of setting up a small web server or network for hosting a site that is as absolutely secure as possible?"

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QwkHyenA writes “I’ve recently cancelled my Linux Magazine subscription because they went paperless. I know, I’m a heartless geek and should be ‘shunned,’ but I enjoy the unplugged sensation of reading paper periodicals. What sort of magazines are out there that still are delivered via USPS that will scratch my Engineering, Coder, System Administrator and 3D Printer itch?”

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mikejuk writes “It was on this day 220 years ago (December 26 1791) that Charles Babbage was born. The calculating machines he invented in the 19th century, although never fully realized in his lifetime, are rightly seen as the forerunners of modern programmable computers. What if he had succeeded? Babbage already had plans for game arcades, chess playing machines, sound generators and desktop publishing. A Victorian computer revolution was entirely possible.”

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An anonymous reader writes “The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has published the new specifications for the C programming language. The standard is known unofficially as C1X and was published officially as ISO/IEC 9899:2011. It provides greater compatibility with the C++ language and adds new features to C (as indicated in the draft).”

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New submitter happyscientist writes “This is a nice ‘Hello World’ for using Hadoop MapReduce on Common Crawl data. I was interested when Common Crawl announced themselves a few weeks ago, but I was hesitant to dive in. This is a good video/example that makes it clear how easy it is to start playing with the crawl data.”

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An anonymous reader writes “NVIDIA has announced they have ‘open-sourced’ their new CUDA compiler so that their GPGPU platform can be brought to new architectures. NVIDIA’s CUDA compiler is based upon LLVM. At the moment though they seem to be restricting the source code’s access to ‘qualified’ individuals.’

The official press release implies wider access to the source will happen later. It so happens that a few days ago AMD opened their OpenCL backend and added initial support to the Free Software r600 driver.

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snydeq writes “Fatal Exception’s Neil McAllister writes in favor of new programming languages, given the difficulty of upgrading existing, popular languages. ‘Whenever a new programming language is announced, a certain segment of the developer population always rolls its eyes and groans that we have quite enough to choose from already,’ McAllister writes. ‘But once a language reaches a certain tipping point of popularity, overhauling it to include support for new features, paradigms, and patterns is easier said than done.’ PHP 6, Perl 6, Python 3, ECMAScript 4 — ‘the lesson from all of these examples is clear: Programming languages move slowly, and the more popular a language is, the slower it moves. It is far, far easier to create a new language from whole cloth than it is to convince the existing user base of a popular language to accept radical changes.’”

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New submitter ittybad writes “I work with a small web-based company, and, for some new web applications, we are looking to possibly change frameworks if it will be a benefit to our developers and our customers. We have experience with PHP’s Symfony 1.4, and are not happy with what we are experiencing with Symfony 2.0. We have some Ruby guys who would love us to implement a Ruby on Rails solution, and our backend is Python powered — so maybe Django is the way to go. So, I ask you, Slashdotters, what web framework do you find to be the best and why? Why would you avoid others?”

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