
Ask HN: Resume busters like Assembler? - bryanlarsen
Back in the 90&#x27;s there existed the phenomenon of C programmers who didn&#x27;t really understand pointers.  You&#x27;d try and tease that out in an interview, but the best way to find someone who really understood C was to find somebody with experience in Assembly Language.<p>When we&#x27;re hiring for Javascript positions, we don&#x27;t really care if they have experience in the framework-du-jour.   Heck, we don&#x27;t really care if they have Javascript experience, we just want to make sure they can learn it and write it in an idiomatic fashion.   Can they think in a functional, asynchronous fashion?<p>Today the equivalent for Javascript is probably a Lisp.  Lisp experience is probably a better predictor of a good Javascript programmer than Javascript experience is.<p>Question 1: Is this recognized by other employers?  If I tell a kid that learning Clojure will make their resume stand out much better  and be useful for much longer than learning the framework-du-jour will, am I steering them wrong?<p>Question 2: Are there any other actionable similar recommendations?   Winning a programming contest is also a good predictor, but it&#x27;s only available to the few.
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bjourne
I agree with you 100%. For web programming, I'd say it is understanding the
http protocol. Many people can code in asp.net or even write servlets but
don't know how session work, cookies or basic things like the differences
between GET and POST.

Also keep in mind that there is a industry full of recruiters who don't agree!
If the job ad says you need previous experience with Boongolatr.js version
3.147 then Boongolatr.js version 3.147 it is. Then good fundamentals and
knowing Scheme, Haskell and shit won't help you.

~~~
ryanmccullagh
Some people seem to think the difference between POST and GET is that POST
"doesn't show the parameters". That's wrong. POST has a body, and GET does
not. The "parameters" go into the body of the message (after the header and
\r\n\r\n)

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brudgers
1\. I think learning a Lisp has a reasonable chance of making the 'kid' a
better programmer. That may or may not appeal to a 'kid' as much as "hacking
the resume process" type advice. Personally, I'd be skeptical of Clojure as
the first lisp for anyone without a strong background in both computer science
and professional experience with Java because, "knowing Clojure" is a much
stronger claim within the community of Clojurists than "knowing Javascript,
HTML, and CSS" is within the community of web developers. A claim to Clojure
is more like a claim to know Haskell and knowing how the JVM (or Javascript in
the case of ClojureScript) is required when debugging.

2\. These days I suspect that the real resume buster is showing your work on
the internet. As programming becomes more of a profession, a professional
portfolio will become more important.

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davelnewton
When I hire I look for specific types of knowledge, not specific languages
(even Lisp and Smalltalk, which are still on my resume). IMO it's really
difficult to tell how much, or what, people know, by looking at standard
resumes.

Just putting Clojure on a resume is meaningless--I can put anything I want on
a resume. It's meaningless until you talk to the person and find out if they
have the basic concepts of multiple paradigms down.

That said: having "interesting" tech on a resume means at least they know the
words and they might be more _likely_ to have a strong developer mind.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Agreed, from the perspective of an interviewer. But from the perspective of a
student, putting down 'Lisp' is probably better than putting down 'functional
programming'. The former implies the latter, but either way the interviewer is
going to have to verify. And from the perspective of telling a student what to
learn, saying "learn functional programming" isn't as actionable as "learn
Lisp".

~~~
thepredestrian
I did a variation of Lisp (called Racket) in for my first CS course in
college.

Since you recommend getting good at it (or at least being competent enough to
demonstrate that in interviews), any tips on how once with a very basic
foundation of functional programming can proceed?

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w4tson
In JVM land I look for another language on the JVM. If Scalia, groovy, kotlin
haven't piqued the interest of a potential hire then it says a lot about them.

A few years ago it would have a been a nice to have. Now it's actually
suspicious if they haven't dabbled!

~~~
vorg
> Scalia, groovy, kotlin

Mentioning Scala or Kotlin on a CV says something different than mentioning
Apache Groovy does. Scala and Kotlin are statically-typed languages designed
for creating applications, whereas Groovy is for scripting, e.g. tests and
builds.

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RUG3Y
Are you hiring?

