Fun(-ish) fact: the name of the main character, Nephele, is a pretty clever wordplay. Nephele is a nymph created by Zeus in the form of a cloud to play one of his clever tricks – a “cloud nymph”, if you will.
IIRC Nephele was also the mother of the first centauri so that Kubernetes, uh, thing, is hardly the most horrifying thing that someone with that name came up with. I’m not sure if that was a factor in choosing the character’s name :-P.
I’m not sure what the point of this story is? That two nerds trying to impress one another have overengineered the simplest problem to infinity? That most programmer interviews are bollocks? Something about how the company is too woke, or not woke enough? I’m thoroughly confused.
People used to try to come up with clever ways to do fizzbuzz to show how clever they were. That’s not in vogue anymore, so people instead veil it as a criticism of contemporary technical interviews instead. Now they not only get to show how clever they are, but also how many fancy words they have in their eclectic lexicon.
Some of it is pretty cool, but I would prefer to get straight to the clever part, without the short story.
She didn’t actually solve the part of the problem that involves printing the result of the fizzbuzz calculation for each of the numbers from 1 to 100 — she just wrote the logic to calculate fizzbuzz for a given number.
The pronunciation footnote is a nice touch. For those who don’t have exposure to a language with the proper “u” sound, a very rough guide to how it ought to be pronounced would be the English word-sequence “key bear net ess”.
However, in addition to pronouncing it correctly, it is also useful to know how and when to decline kubernetes.
One problem is that ancient Greek and modern Greek are not the same language – what I’ve given is a close-enough version for English-native speakers of how I was taught to pronounce the ancient Greek κυβερνήτης.
It’s the ü from German (or many other languages). This is formed by saying “ee” with your lips rounded like for “oo.” I would not describe it as just ee, since to my english-speaking ear it sounds much more like oo :)
I did six terms of French in school, plus the Greek. And though in theory I can pronounce the “u” correctly from having done it in French, I still sometimes struggle with it, and find that emphasizing the “ee” sound is closer to correct if someone (like me) has trouble doing it properly.
Reading the article reminded me of two things I’ve found to be useful:
In an interview, like in life, paying attention to a social dynamic and striving to make other people comfortable is an important aspect of personal interactions.
However, trying to draw broad conclusions from each small detail of an interaction is too noisy.
Fun(-ish) fact: the name of the main character, Nephele, is a pretty clever wordplay. Nephele is a nymph created by Zeus in the form of a cloud to play one of his clever tricks – a “cloud nymph”, if you will.
IIRC Nephele was also the mother of the first centauri so that Kubernetes, uh, thing, is hardly the most horrifying thing that someone with that name came up with. I’m not sure if that was a factor in choosing the character’s name :-P.
(Oh, yeah, I’m really fun at parties.)
If there’s a path from Aphyr fanfic to better databases, I’m all for it.
I’m not sure what the point of this story is? That two nerds trying to impress one another have overengineered the simplest problem to infinity? That most programmer interviews are bollocks? Something about how the company is too woke, or not woke enough? I’m thoroughly confused.
https://aphyr.com/posts/340-reversing-the-technical-interview and its follow up posts might provide some more context :)
People used to try to come up with clever ways to do fizzbuzz to show how clever they were. That’s not in vogue anymore, so people instead veil it as a criticism of contemporary technical interviews instead. Now they not only get to show how clever they are, but also how many fancy words they have in their eclectic lexicon.
Some of it is pretty cool, but I would prefer to get straight to the clever part, without the short story.
She didn’t actually solve the part of the problem that involves printing the result of the fizzbuzz calculation for each of the numbers from 1 to 100 — she just wrote the logic to calculate fizzbuzz for a given number.
The pronunciation footnote is a nice touch. For those who don’t have exposure to a language with the proper “u” sound, a very rough guide to how it ought to be pronounced would be the English word-sequence “key bear net ess”.
However, in addition to pronouncing it correctly, it is also useful to know how and when to decline kubernetes.
You could also listen to it here by google translate: https://translate.google.com/?sl=el&tl=en&text=%CE%BA%CF%85%CE%B2%CE%B5%CF%81%CE%BD%CE%AE%CF%84%CE%B7%CF%82&op=translate
which sounds more like keyverNITeess - but I’m not greek :D
One problem is that ancient Greek and modern Greek are not the same language – what I’ve given is a close-enough version for English-native speakers of how I was taught to pronounce the ancient Greek κυβερνήτης.
It’s the ü from German (or many other languages). This is formed by saying “ee” with your lips rounded like for “oo.” I would not describe it as just ee, since to my english-speaking ear it sounds much more like oo :)
I did six terms of French in school, plus the Greek. And though in theory I can pronounce the “u” correctly from having done it in French, I still sometimes struggle with it, and find that emphasizing the “ee” sound is closer to correct if someone (like me) has trouble doing it properly.
— that was good!
I don’t know if it’s supposed to be, but I find this story charming and hilarious!
Ooh, you get to find out about Aphyr’s series, which this sorta works with! It’s mentioned in another comment here, and at the bottom of the article.
Thanks! These are great.
This need the satire tag to avoid inspiring people to actually start solving fizzbuzz like this. :)
Wow! I learned a lot by reading this article and had some fun, great style!
so many gems here… snickered wryly, coyly, quizzically, dejectedly etc
I’m not sure why – but this really made me cringe, even though I loved the original Aphyr series.
Reading the article reminded me of two things I’ve found to be useful:
In an interview, like in life, paying attention to a social dynamic and striving to make other people comfortable is an important aspect of personal interactions.
However, trying to draw broad conclusions from each small detail of an interaction is too noisy.
| No interviewers were harmed in the process of writing.
but one was schooled :~)