Lionel Barrow's Blog

Predicting the Success of Pair Programming Interviews

Mon, 03 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last 4 years I’ve interviewed hundreds of engineers, first as a manager at a large company and then as the head of engineering at a startup. I believe in and heavily use pair programming interviews, in which the candidate and interviewer work through a small programming problem together.

The Computer Boys Take Over by Nathan Ensmenger

Tue, 13 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Most history, from the high drama of Thucydides to the folk history of, say, the computing industry, focuses on the highlights and the standouts: the Gates, Jobs, and Zuckerbergs. In The Computer Boys Take Over, Nathan Ensmenger does the opposite - he tells the story of the emergence of the computer industry through the anonymous legions of men and women working as programmers, coders, system designers and so on. The result is less a gripping narrative than a comprehensive account of how software development came to occupy the social, financial and professional status it has today.

Who by Geoff Smart and Randy Street

Tue, 30 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Most writing on management includes a paean to the importance of hiring the right people, the best people, who will differentiate the organization from the rest and make dreams come true. Despite widespread agreement on the importance of hiring, I haven’t seen anything on how to actually do it - how to go out and build a top team.

High school blues

Sun, 29 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I recently saw both Lady Bird and Love, Simon, two movies that focus on the difficulties of being a teenager and navigating high school. They’re both good movies - not to skip too far ahead, but in my opinion Lady Bird is actually a great movie - and their overlapping topics and time in theaters makes a comparison feel natural.

Is your problem actually a performance problem?

Sun, 19 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

When I was learning to be an engineer, people told me two different stories about application performance. The first was that while it’s fun to work on, don’t spend too much time on it unless you have to - premature optimization and all that. The second was that really, though, it’s good to have a fast system because users like fast systems - that is, performance is a feature. But when it’s all said and done, I’ve mostly been doing web application development, where performance is often seen as a problem to be solved only when encountered in an extremely obvious way (“oh, this request is timing out, better add an index”).

Mistakes people make when hiring

Mon, 24 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Interviewing developers is difficult and, what’s worse controversial. Rather than spill ink on how to interview a candidate, I want to cover a few mistakes I see people make when making hire/no-hire recommendations after an interview.

Services. Because we're all mediocre.

Mon, 03 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Progress in the field of software development occurs when developers invent technical solutions to problems caused by their own laziness, lack of discipline and mediocrity. Or, to put it more kindly, when we repeatedly prove that we can’t be trusted to do something, we invent a way to avoid doing it. This is a good thing.

Notes on weight loss

Fri, 09 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Since November of last year I’ve been trying to lose weight. I didn’t start trying at a moment of personal crisis or anything like that; I was just frustrated with my health and appearance and decided to make a serious effort. The previous attempts I’d made at weight loss boiled down to going to the gym a bit more and had no real impact. I had never tried dieting. But, sitting around in my apartment in the late fall, I decided to give it a serious shot.

Hearthstone has a type system

Sun, 19 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Hearthstone, the online card game by Blizzard, is well known for its exciting gameplay and huge community. I’d hold it up as a real triumph of game design; it’s well balanced, fast and fun. Beyond individual card design, though, Hearthstone stands out thanks to some subtle but powerful decisions the developers made about how the core of the game works. In this blog post, I’ll examine one such core decision – players may only make choices on their turn – and ponder the effects of this invariant as if the game were a software program (which, come to think of it, it is).

I'm a good engineer but I suck at building stuff

Sun, 08 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

A few hours ago, !!con wrapped up. It was fantastic. Often I leave conferences having learned something, but tired and ready for the weekend. Writing this from the plane, I feel filled with excitement and energy.