One of my favorite questions is: "What's the best bug you've ever found?"
One of the problems I always have with questions like that is this: I don't keep mental lists of events or other things ordered by potential "interestingness" to myself or other people. I just don't think that way for some reason.
I might fumble to come up with an answer to that question, and then an hour after the interview is over, I'll remember a really good story the interviewer would have liked, but in the meantime I've looked like an inexperienced, bumbling fool.
Not that it really matters, of course--eventually I'll get through an interview without hitting a question that doesn't work for me, get hired, and then actually get to do some good work for somebody. Getting through that process feels fairly random to me.
Same here. To compensate, I load my memory up with "interesting" anecdotes for interviews. Including my most embarrassing moment, which luckily happens to center around a bug. (Failing that, I'd probably grab a recent bug and dress it up to be interesting. I guess you can always riff about techniques which prevent that particular class of bugs.)
But now of course, if I ever go on an interview again, I'd dredge up some funny bug. Just in case. :)
That was my first thought, too. I've had some bugs that actually make good stories, if told right... But I had a lot of other stories that are better. The only halfway interesting bug I can think of right now is actually pretty lame, and the rest of the story that goes with it is halfway interesting.
There's always a danger when picking out certain criteria and claiming they mean something. In this case, 'ability to remember an interesting bug' does not actually select for good programmers. It just happens to overlap somewhat.
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One of my favorite questions is: "What's the best bug you've ever found?"
One of the problems I always have with questions like that is this: I don't keep mental lists of events or other things ordered by potential "interestingness" to myself or other people. I just don't think that way for some reason.
I might fumble to come up with an answer to that question, and then an hour after the interview is over, I'll remember a really good story the interviewer would have liked, but in the meantime I've looked like an inexperienced, bumbling fool.
Not that it really matters, of course--eventually I'll get through an interview without hitting a question that doesn't work for me, get hired, and then actually get to do some good work for somebody. Getting through that process feels fairly random to me.
Same here. To compensate, I load my memory up with "interesting" anecdotes for interviews. Including my most embarrassing moment, which luckily happens to center around a bug. (Failing that, I'd probably grab a recent bug and dress it up to be interesting. I guess you can always riff about techniques which prevent that particular class of bugs.)
But now of course, if I ever go on an interview again, I'd dredge up some funny bug. Just in case. :)
That was my first thought, too. I've had some bugs that actually make good stories, if told right... But I had a lot of other stories that are better. The only halfway interesting bug I can think of right now is actually pretty lame, and the rest of the story that goes with it is halfway interesting.
There's always a danger when picking out certain criteria and claiming they mean something. In this case, 'ability to remember an interesting bug' does not actually select for good programmers. It just happens to overlap somewhat.