On: Leveling up in job interviews for software enginee...

[scarface_74]

There are two things to ramp up on - the technology and the business.

If they know the technology that’s one less thing to worry about.

[solarmist → scarface_74]

And you can know 100% of the technologies they use; open the repo and still say,

“what the hell were they thinking using X like Y!”

“Why didn’t they use Y here”

“Oh man, this looks like monkey patched code from 2 full versions ago, the right way to handle this now would be 1/3 the code, but oh they can’t update it because they’re mutating the data structure in order to Z… Fuck…”

Edit: Eventually, you'll come to an understanding of why it's that way, but it takes time and often experimentation.

[scarface_74 → solarmist]

Everyone thinks what came before then was done stupidly.

With maturity, you realize whatever they did worked well enough to get the company to a position where they were able to hire you.

As Corey Quinn (a well known “cloud economist”) says, “legacy software is software that generates revenue”.

[solarmist → scarface_74]

That wasn't the point. You missed the context or something. Those were just examples of initial thoughts that come up when starting to understand a new codebase.

My point was exactly the opposite and parallel to what you said. But even with experience it takes time to decode those decisions.

The point is that it takes time to understand the whys of code that is counterintuitive at first.

Even if you are a 100% match for the technology.