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#jobs-discuss
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2017-02-15
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thomas08:02:11

interesting discussion I have to say! ๐Ÿ‘

lmergen09:02:01

@qqq i think your best approach might be to actively look for a developer that fits the profile. go try to find some devs that have released similar projects in Clojure, and make them an offer

qqq10:02:33

the questions indeed were fantastic; I'm now convinced that I did a terrible job explaining the spec -- and I should have a list of unit tests, like: for these 1000 examples, I want BLAH as output (where for the 1000 examples, I do "clj AST -> TeX code -> render to SVG") and then ask the contractor to produce output that matches (but done all in cljs, without calling TeX)

sveri10:02:45

@qqq did you think about the fact, that you wont profit from updates / bugfixes to KaTex. The same goes for new features.

sveri10:02:54

Interoperability is a thing for a reason ๐Ÿ™‚

qqq10:02:04

@sveri: I'm happy to have this project be BSD/MIT (mentioned earlier I think). I suspect if such a project existed, other CLJS devs would add new features of TeX to it just for fun. Furthermore, I think plain TeX has been rather stable for the last 30 years. ๐Ÿ™‚

qqq10:02:39

Mathematical notation doesn't seem to change every 6 months with a new React.js release ๐Ÿ™‚

sveri10:02:16

I think the community is just to small for that now. If I had the choice to contribute to KaTex or to a cljs port that will be behind most of the times I would pick KaTex right now.

qqq10:02:38

really? I'd pick the cljs one just so I could use clojure

sveri10:02:27

Well one of the reasons I use clj / cljs for my private stuff is that I can always rely on Java / javascript libraries and the huge ecosystem around them. Thats also the reason I dont use OCaml / Haskell, Racket, because of the lack of libraries in certain regards.

sveri10:02:19

I dont want to rewrite existing stuff just so I can hack in cljs. I want to get things done, whatever that is. But that is just me. Your goals can be different of course ๐Ÿ™‚

qqq10:02:12

The point is not rewriting for the sake of rewriting; but because it's easier to get things done in cljs/clj. For example, I would donate money to a "rewrite emacs in cljs" project not because I think rewriting-in-cljs is valuable on it's own -- but because I'd rather extend emacs in cljs rather than elisp.

qqq10:02:09

So I think the issue may be as follows: If I'm just building on top of an existing library, I odn't care if it's cljs or js (i.e. I'm not rewriting React.js) However, if I have to tear an existing lib to pieces and re-assemble them in a different way (as I do with math rendering) -- I really prefer the original codebase be in cljs rather than js.

thomas11:02:53

I can see @qqq that you have some special requirements that (for you at least) will make a rewrite fom js->clj(s) worth doing.

thomas11:02:39

and that you are willing to pay for it is very good/nice (can't quite think of the right word now)

qqq11:02:35

(PS: it's clearly no one is interested in doing it for 5k -- but if you are, please contact me before starting to work on it -- I don't want to randomly get a msgs of "here's a prototype, now where's my 5k?") ๐Ÿ™‚

thomas11:02:34

as mentioned before... while I really like that idea I don't have the time for it at the moment. (nor anytime in the near future I suspect). but good luck finding someone who wants to do it.

sveri11:02:42

@qqq Would you need an invoice?

qqq11:02:53

@sveri: the main issue is, I don't want, one month from now, get 5 different people asking me for 5k ๐Ÿ™‚

sveri11:02:13

Yea, thats clear, but my question was tangential to that ๐Ÿ˜‰

qqq11:02:35

in my particular case, I was going to just use paypal (not sure if it takes 5K , have only tried up to $60.00 )

qqq11:02:31

in case someon reading the logs is interested, the protocol would be: (1) we chat on slack, (2) we chat over email / hash out when you get paid (we can setup mile stones for things like vbox, hbox, frac, sup, sub, limits, matrix, etc ...) // but don't start working on this before we negotiate all that ๐Ÿ™‚

tord19:02:23

We're trying to hire a new junior developer, and we have a remote candidate who seems sufficiently awesome that we have to give her a chance, but unfortunately our recruiting budget does not allow us to invite her to the office for an interview. The way we usually do technical interviews is highly interactive: I don't just give the candidates exercises and then passively watch them solve them, I prefer to do it pair programming style, with me and the candidate solving problems together. The aim isn't as much to test what they already know as to test how easily I can teach them things, and how well we work together. We usually need both a whiteboard and a shared computer to make this work. Does anyone have any experience with remote interviews? What tools would be the most effective for doing something vaguely similar to what I describe above? In case it matters, I'm an OS X user, but I don't know what platform our candidate uses.

byron-woodfork20:02:35

@tord screenhero might be of help to you

byron-woodfork20:02:57

That's what we use when pair programming remotely. Either dev can take control of the screen at any time.

pesterhazy20:02:01

Doesn't hangouts support screen sharing too?

pesterhazy20:02:25

There's also http://appear.in, which worked well the last time I tried it

tord20:02:45

@byron-woodfork , @pesterhazy: Thanks! Screenhero and http://appear.in both look very promising.

tord20:02:43

Unfortunately, Screenhero requires signing up in order to download, and "new signups are closed while we integrate with Slack". ๐Ÿ˜ข

hiredman20:02:25

my favorite way to pair program remotely is to ssh in to the same machine and share a tmux and emacs. audio over skype or the phone, or anything really. it is simple works well, and has been very robust for years. At my previous job it was how we pair programmed, how we interviewed, and in general just got things done. But since leaving that job, I think the only time I found someone else doing that was an interview at Cognitect where they might have just been accommodating me.

hiredman20:02:47

ssh + tmux + emacs is acutally my preferred development environment even when not pairing.

hiredman21:02:24

luckily I haven't really had to pair at my new job, because they use all these new screensharing tools like screenhero, which have a terrible ux and far from universal support

jakemcc21:02:51

@tord I work in a fully distributed pair programming environment and we did what sounds like similar style interviews. http://zoom.us works pretty well. Preferred that to ssh and tmux or screen because it didnโ€™t force interviewee to use an editor that works in a terminal. I havenโ€™t used http://appear.in for that but have used it for other screen sharing and it worked fine. That wasnโ€™t for a cooperative screen share though.

tord21:02:06

@hiredman: Won't work for us, I'm afraid. I want our candidate to be able to use the tools she's familiar and comfortable with (which probably aren't going to be ssh, tmux and emacs).

tord21:02:25

@jakemcc: Thanks, http://zoom.us looks like an interesting option.

qqq21:02:40

@tord: by pair programming, do you also have to type / control the cursor? if not, she can just use http://livecoding.tv and you can communicate via text/speech

tord21:02:27

Both sides being able to type and control the cursor would be a plus, but probably not entirely necessary. I'll look into http://livecoding.tv as well. Thanks!

aleksanders22:02:27

@tord happy to send screenhero invite if needed

tord23:02:06

@aleksanders: Thanks, that would be great!