FizzBuzz

So, there's this thing called the FizzBuzz test, which it turns out that a lot of people applying for "programmer" jobs can't pass. In a spirit of adventure, I had a go at it myself:
(require (lib "1.ss" "srfi")) ;iota
(define (fizz-buzz n)
(let ((multiple-of-three (= 0 (modulo n 3)))
   (multiple-of-five (= 0 (modulo n 5))))
(if multiple-of-three
   (display "fizz"))
(if multiple-of-five
   (display "buzz"))
(if (not (or multiple-of-three multiple-of-five))
   (display n))
(newline)))

(for-each (lambda (n)
       (fizz-buzz (+ 1 n)))
     (iota 99))
It took me a bit longer than the "under a couple of minutes" that Imran wants a good programmer to do it in (but this is not written on a piece of paper, this was written in DrScheme, and I ran it, and it works) but less time than the 15 minutes that "self-proclaimed senior programmers" sometimes take--which I suppose makes me a middling-good semi-senior programmer, which is about right.

The discussion of this on CodingHorror pulls together a lot of amazed reactions from various places, but none of them quite seem to grasp the nettle which is not so much that there a lot of really bad programmers around, but that there are a lot of IT professionals around who apply for "programmer" jobs even though their work experience doesn't actually include any programming.

This is a relatively new thing, and seems to be different from the old "data processing" vs "real programming" divide: I'll bet a grizzled COBOL walloper could polish off the fizzbuzz problem pretty quickly (and it would probably compile first time, too) But if your "IT" job consists, as many do these days, of using rich visual tools to script up interactions between enterprise components supplied by the tool vendor, or maybe filling in the templates used to generate the code that generates the code that gets scripted up by someone else, or any one of a number of other similar things then you certainly work at building IT systems, but what you do is not programming. And really, that's OK, kind-of. It isn't anything to be ashamed of, in and of itself.

The economic and cultural conditions that have caused such dreary jobs to exist and be worth having perhaps are something to be ashamed of, but this is not the fault of the people filling the jobs.

 

Fitted up

Anyway, back in the late 1990's when I was persuing a post-grad course in Software Engineering there was talk of "component foundaries", and the idea that there would be people like the toolmakers and machinists or yore working in these foundaries. And then there would be something like fitters who would assemble working systems out of those components. Please accept my apologies if you are reading this in a country that has not turned its back on manufacturing (except in certain specialized areas) and still know what I'm talking about. Being a fitter was a fine profession, back in the day, but no-one would hire a fitter as a toolmaker (although a fitter might aspire to be and retrain as, a toolmaker). This change now seems now to have happened in the IT industry, without being widely recognised.

Maybe we suffer from a sort of false democracy, a misguided anti-elitism in the industry. And maybe this is a capitulation to those who would commodify our work. Maybe we need to face up to these sorts of distinctions a bit more honestly and stop expecting that everyone who has anything at all to do with building systems will be skilled as a programmer, should be expected to be able to write code from scratch. It just may not be what they do. Ever. If you want to hire someone who can write code from scratch, the pool of "IT professionals" is not the only place to look, nor is everyone in it a candidate.

 

Plug

By the way, I do want to hire such people, and our hiring process for all technical positions involves a session of actual pair programming, at a workstation, writing real code that has to work, and be shown to work. And the problems we set are a damn sight more complicated that fizz-buzz. If you like the sound of being in the group of people who are successful at such a test, and if you live within, or would be willing to move within, commuting distiance of the inside of the M 25, then why not send me a CV?

More Real Engineering

Via 37 Signals this delicious quote, one of several on this page:
If a major project is truly innovative, you cannot possibly know its exact cost and its exact schedule at the beginning. And if in fact you do know the exact cost and the exact schedule, chances are that the technology is obsolete.
As the discussion on 37S suggests, the word "obsolete" is rather strong. But then, the chap quoted here was Director of the Lunar Module Programme at Grumman. Working on Apollo probably gave you a rather different idea of what was obsolete from that of the average person. Or even the average engineer.

But the essence of the quote is absolutely right. And this is a crucial difference between manufacturing and creative engineering. Which of these things you think software development most resembles will have a big impact on what you think a plan looks like, and what sort of things you think are reasonable estimates to use to build that plan. That's not to say that in the case of innovation all bets are off: the Apollo Programme did meet JFK's deadline for putting a man on the moon and returning him to Earth (just).

But the next time you are starting a development project, getting set for iteration zero, or the inception phase, or whatever you call it, think about which parts of the project are innovative, and which are business-as-usual. Hint: using RoR to render SQL conversations over HTTP this time round instead of J2EE is not innovation. That's just no longer attempting to do you job with one hand tied behind your back. Second hint: the innovative bits are the ones that the business sponsors are really exited about and that the architect (don't pretend you don't have one) thinks are going to be "interesting" and that the project manager has to have a stiff drink before contemplating.

There are better ways to deal with the uncertainty that comes along with the huge promise of innovation, and, well... less good ones. You owe it to yourself (and your business sponsor) to figure out which aspects of the project you should be doing which way. Oh, and if the answer is mostly business-as-usual you owe it to the business to ask why the project is being done at all.