

A cool way of finding a good web developer - megamark16
http://playground.thesedays.com/ninja/

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mattlanger
1.) The person you want to hire is probably going to grate at the use of terms
like "ninja" and "monkey", even if you only intended them ironically.

2.) The person you want to hire is probably going to think twice about working
with a group who considers viewing HTML source to be a demonstration of one's
"ninja-skills".

3.) The person you want to hire probably got bored after 30 seconds and went
to go do the <http://www.pythonchallenge.com/> instead.

~~~
oliverkofoed
It's not a matter of ensuring that people are good at view sourcing -- it's a
matter of filtering out the people who don't even know how to do that.

~~~
pohl
The viewing of source is only the first step of several.

~~~
ekiru
The viewing of source was every step other than the last one. I have never
coded in javascript at all, but their "web developer" trial was trivial even
for me.

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ghiotion
I'm not sure what the deal is with all the criticism on here. Yeah, it wasn't
all that hard - but that's the point. This is a good test of a basic level of
skills one needs these days to be a Web developer (Firebug, parsing HTTP
headers, deciphering Javascript, jQuery). And, it was fun.

All the hate reminds me of the quote: "Criticism is an indirect form of self-
boasting."

So, if you read HN and you were able to get through step 5, congratulations!
You're at least an average Web developer.

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mattiss
Can we PLEASE stop using Code + Ninja, Pirate, Monkey, Shaman, Cosmonaut,
Santa Claus, etc..

~~~
potatolicious
I actually wouldn't mind being called a Code Santa, it sounds pretty awesome
actually.

Except, given my coding abilities, I would more resemble Robot Santa from
Futurama.

~~~
mattiss
Gave me a chuckle. Code Santa does sound pretty awesome doesn't it?

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storborg
I wish I'd thought of this for my job listings, it's a fun couple minutes.
Well done, gentlemen.

So many of these puzzle challenges (e.g. Google Aptitude Test circa 2004,
Facebook Programming Puzzles, etc) seem like they would discourage people who
already have a great full time job, or actively maintain an open source
project, etc... who are exactly the people you want. This one seems to strike
a great balance between time invested and skills/thought process tested.

~~~
bscofield
Really? The skills tested here seem utterly trivial... It was fun for a few
minutes, but nowhere near challenging enough to make me sit up and take notice
(of course, YMMV)

~~~
storborg
It is pretty trivial... that was my point. If it weren't trivial, then people
would just skip it and move on. But it's cute and still sufficiently non-
trivial to be a helpful filter for the person who has to sort through the tide
of resumes.

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jonathandeamer
They could do with a proof-reading ninja..."forfill": <http://bit.ly/forfill>

Don't mean to be petty, but that sort of attention to detail is really
important as far as I'm concerned.

~~~
lanstein
and web ninja shouldn't be hyphenated... and résumé (or resume), not resumé...
spacer gifs are lame... I figured the point was to spot the errors

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rimantas
Let's hope the web-ninja they hire will know that one does not need to put
"javascript:" into onclick event handler, or better yet, that this pseudo-
protocol should be avoided.

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m0th87
Hmm, the document doesn't even validate:
[http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://playground.theseday...](http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://playground.thesedays.com/ninja/&charset=\(detect+automatically\)&doctype=Inline&group=0)

While the importance XHTML validity is arguable dubious, I would hope that at
the very least a company trying to show off its ninja skills to prospective
web developers would spend the extra effort.

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eplawless
I hope that by "top shelf" they mean "will be considered at all"... with the
exception of the last bit being entirely unrelated to web development, it was
all really basic and the solutions should be required knowledge.

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nfnaaron
"We are These Days, a contemporary communications agency. We create deep
relations between brands and their customers.

Not by forcing our foot through the door (you can’t get _passed_ the
videophone anyhow these days)."

Emphasis added.

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dnewcome
I think that there should have been several more levels or something. Maybe
different codes for black belt vs. yellow. Or Sensei vs student. Nice idea for
basic skill testing though.

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sosuke
The Flash one was a lot of fun, too bad they aren't in an area I would want to
relocate too. If anyone was stuck or curious about the solution my email is on
my profile.

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nym
Seriously? I was expecting something a little harder...

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ihumanable
Hmm... pretty cool, I'm stuck on step 3

~~~
megamark16
That one took me forever, in the end I just had to watch the pipe really
closely :-) Don't give up!

~~~
fnid
A hint is to watch the location bar when you click it.

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yef
no easter egg in the source of the last page? oh well.

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dubcomesaveme
looks like they need to find one given the state of links on their main index
(in Opera at least)

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ilovecheese
... and how many hoops do you have to jump through before you find out how
much the job actually pays?

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doki_pen
SHIZZLE this is cool!

~~~
pohl
down-modders either didn't get that far or they don't like spoilers.

~~~
aarongough
Either that or the down-modders involved have enough of a sense of honor to
not post spoilers...

~~~
ephemeral
and replies like this don't give it away at all

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alx
SHIZZLE :)

~~~
TheBranca18
Not cool at all.

